Posted by tourdemars to Life on Mars at February 12, 2003 12:00 PM

Like Earth organisms, Martian organisms would pass gas. So why not use this as a marker for life on the Red Planet? Scientists from George Mason University and the California Institute of Technology suggest we do just that. In a paper in Geophysical Research Letters, the scientists say that bacteria that evolved early in Martian history and then moved underground could be producing detectable methane.