Join today’s search for signs of alien life in fossil remains from prehistoric Mars, an Earth-like world that glittered with rivers, lakes, and deep blue seas.

Billions of years ago, there was another Earth in our solar system: the temperate and blue-streaked world of ancient Mars. Today, the rocky ruins of that lost world offer our best hope of finding signs of alien life. In How to Find a Martian, astrobiologist and paleontologist Sean McMahon argues that we may soon find fossils on Mars—perhaps even in our lifetime.

There are now thousands of astrobiologists around the world, using the tools of modern science to answer some of the most profound, intellectually exciting questions that have ever been asked: What is life? How does it evolve and proliferate across vast spans of space and time, and what forms might it take on alien worlds? The search for life on Mars is a mainstay of this research program, and it has never been more advanced, more sophisticated, or better funded than it is today. Although scientists have not yet found fossils on Mars, astrobiologist Sean McMahon says, we have at least learned how to find them. We now know which regions and landscapes on Mars could once have supported life and preserved its remains in rocks and minerals. We know how the remains of living organisms can end up woven into the texture of ancient rocks, transmuted into minerals or transcribed into the subtle language of fossil carbon molecules. But we have also learned to be cautious—and not to be fooled when non-living nature imitates the patterns of life. 

Accessibly explaining trailblazing ideas and findings in astronomy, geology, microbiology, and paleontology, McMahon makes a persuasive and alluring case that we have the tools, ideas, methods, and missions to find past life on Mars.