新托福阅读材料：Marssitemayhold‘buriedlife’

会计考友

人类一直都在茫茫太空中寻找着同伴，而火星属于类地行星，也就是类似地球的星球，它距离太阳近，体积和质量都较小，平均密度较大，表面温度较高，大小与地球差不多，也都是由岩石构成的。科学家认为其有孕育生命的可能，因此非常有研究价值。  
　　Researchers have identified rocks that they say could contain the fossilised remains of life on early Mars.

; ^% e, N' A2 v　　The team made their discovery in the ancient rocks of Nili Fossae.
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　　Their work has revealed that this trench on the dark side of Mars is a "dead ringer" for a region in Australia where some of the earliest evidence of life on Earth has been buried and preserved in mineral form.

　　They report the findings in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

　　The team, led by a scientist from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (Seti) in California, believes that the same "hydrothermal" processes that preserved these markers of life on Earth could have taken place on Mars at Nili Fossae.
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　　The rocks there are up to four billion years old, which means they have been around for three-quarters of the history of Mars.

　　When, in 2008, scientists first discovered carbonate in those rocks the Mars science community reacted with great excitement; carbonate had long been sought as definitive evidence that the Red planet was habitable - that life could have existed there.