By Ashley Strickland Ko

A leopard-spotted rock uncovered on Mars by the Perseverance rover could help unlock whether life ever existed on the red planet.

Percy, as the NASA team calls the robotic explorer, collected a sample from the Cheyava Falls rock just over a year ago, using everything in its tool kit to study the striking pattern and other poppy seed-like features. Since then, scientists have been analyzing the rover’s data, which revealed an intriguing combination of chemical compounds in the specimen.

The leopard spots may have formed due to the presence of ancient microbes, which means the rock could provide evidence of a potential biosignature.

“So this very well could be the clearest sign of life that we’ve ever found on Mars, which is incredibly exciting,” said acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy. Further study is necessary, however, to confirm such a landmark discovery.

The question of how the samples will be returned remains unanswered — but one day, human boot prints may appear alongside rover tracks on Mars if SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s dream comes to fruition.

This artist's concept depicts a massive orbital space station called an O’Neill colony.

Two billionaires, both at the helm of commercial space companies, have lofty yet diverging visions for how humans could live in space.

Musk has long touted the idea of large, self-sustaining settlements on Mars, while Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos imagines massive orbiting laboratories in space where millions could live and work.

Both concepts have been put forth as ways to ensure that humanity survives in case something renders Earth uninhabitable, but each one comes with risks and challenges as well as ethical dilemmas.

CNN’s Jackie Wattles explores both scenarios, their vastly different timescales and why, at the end of the day, we would still need Earth. 

When researchers studied an Iberian harvester ant nest in Sicily, they were surprised to unearth another species of harvester ant inside the colony that typically lives hundreds of miles away.

This one mystery led to a finding stranger than fiction. It turns out that Iberian harvester ant queens require the other species, called Messor structor ants, for mating to produce a hybrid workforce. Instead of living in proximity to Messor structor ants, the queens evolved to clone them. 

But the ultimate eye-opener was when researchers spied an Iberian harvester ant giving birth to two different species — one hairy and one virtually hairless.

Scientists filmed an undiscovered species as it swam by an underwater camera more than 10,000 feet below the ocean’s surface. Meet the pink-hued, big-eyed bumpy snailfish.

Some scientists believe that a human-caused sixth mass extinction responsible for the demise of hundreds of species is already underway.

Now, new research, at odds with a 2023 study, suggests that the decline in biodiversity isn’t anywhere near a mass extinction-level event, which typically means a loss of 75% of species over a certain amount of time.

Recent extinctions of plant and animal groups are rare and often occur on islands, the study authors said.

“One thing we emphasize, every single one of these extinctions is a tragedy and should never have happened and should not happen in the future,” said John Wiens, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona. Not all experts agree, however, citing the concerning current extinction rates.

Researchers collected samples from the dinosaur eggs to determine their age.

Speaking of extinction, 28 fossilized dinosaur eggs found in central China could shed light on how dinosaurs adjusted as the world changed about 86 million years ago.

Scientists used a micro-laser to shave off eggshell samples so they could be dated using an “atomic clock” method. This approach relies on counting individual uranium and lead atoms present within the fossils and evaluating their ratio.

The slightly flattened eggs were quite porous, which could offer a clue as to how dinosaurs adapted as Earth began to cool down during the Cretaceous Period. Researchers are still trying to determine what kind of dinosaur laid the eggs in the first place.

Check out these stunning finds:

— For the first time, scientists have created a neural map that shows activity sparking across the entire brain as a decision is made — with the help of mice wearing electrode helmets while turning tiny steering wheels.

— Astronomers got an unprecedented glimpse inside the collision of two black holes — including a “ringing” that confirms decades-old predictions by physicists Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.

— Officials approved a single-dose chlamydia vaccine to protect Australia’s iconic koalas from the disease, which is responsible for half of all koala deaths in the country’s wild populations.

And before you go: Did you miss your chance to see a blood moon during the total lunar eclipse this week? See what the crimson-hued orb looked like around the world.

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