---
title: "NASA’s Mars Rover Comes Across Formation That Looks Like the Scales of a Massive Cosmic Reptile"
description: "NASA's Curiosity Rover discovered a large cluster of polygonal rocks on the planet of Mars, which may indicate evidence of water."
date: "2026-04-18"
modified: "2026-04-18"
authors:
  - name: "Sharon Adarlo"
    job_title: "Correspondent"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/sadarlo"
url: "https://futurism.com/space/nasa-mars-rover-crater-rocks"
categories:
  - "Astronomy"
  - "Mars"
  - "Off-World"
  - "Space"
---

# NASA’s Mars Rover Comes Across Formation That Looks Like the Scales of a Massive Cosmic Reptile

![Rocky, cracked terrain with a reddish-brown hue, featuring fragmented and weathered rock formations. The lower left corner shows part of a mechanical structure with the word "CURIOSITY" partially visible, indicating the image was taken by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/nasa-mars-rover-crater-rocks.jpg>)
*Source: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS / Kevin M. Gill*

Far away on the surface of Mars, NASA's [Curiosity Rover](<https://science.nasa.gov/mission/msl-curiosity/>) took a side quest this weekend and captured images of a mysterious roadside attraction: a rocky surface that resembles the scales of a cosmically large reptile that has scientists stumped on its origin.

Kevin M. Gill, engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, posted the [images](<https://bsky.app/profile/kevinmgill.bsky.social/post/3mjk4dzfhqk24>) showing this distinctive polygonal rock surface from the vantage point of the trusty rover that's been exploring the Red Planet since 2012; the rover was on its way to investigate a small crater when it happened upon the intriguing landscape feature.

"We’ve seen polygon-patterned rocks like these before, but they didn’t seem quite this dramatically abundant, stretching across the ground for meters and meters in our Mastcam mosaics," read a [statement from the space agency](<https://science.nasa.gov/blog/curiosity-blog-sols-4859-4866-one-small-crater-and-thousands-of-polygons/>). "This week we continued to collect lots of images and chemical data that will help us distinguish between different hypotheses for how the honeycomb textures formed."

https://bsky.app/profile/kevinmgill.bsky.social/post/3mjk4dzfhqk24

One intriguing theory on the origin of these textured scales is that they're ancient cracked mud banks that went through frequent seasonal cycles of being wet and dry over and over again due to the influence of flowing water, back around 3.8 to 3.6 billion years ago when Mars was wetter and warmer, [according to a *Nature* paper in 2022](<https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06220-3.epdf>).

Curiosity came across the scaly formation as it was on its way towards a 32-foot-diameter crater that scientists have dubbed Antofagasta, after a city and region in Chile. Researchers think the crater could hold traces of organic chemicals — major keys to the existence of ancient organisms, according to the space agency.

Evidence of life on Mars is growing, albeit slowly. Last year, NASA [announced](<https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-says-mars-rover-discovered-potential-biosignature-last-year/>) that its Perseverance Mars rover had found leopard spots on some rocks in the Jezero Crater that may indicate the biosignatures of long-dead microbes.

**More on Mars:** *[Scientists Intrigued by "Negative Mass Anomaly" Under Surface of Mars](<https://futurism.com/space/negative-mass-anomaly-mars>)*