A rock that looks like a shark’s fin and looks like a crab on Mars has been photographed by NASA’s Perseverance rover, writes… live science. The robot reached the area called Jezero Crater in February 2021, and since then it has picked up many interesting formations. The image of the rocks shown here was taken on August 18th.

Mars today is a very dry and inhospitable place, but it was different in the distant past. Billions of years ago, the celestial body had a strong magnetic field and dense atmosphere, and large masses of water were located on its surface. Researchers believe that life could have existed on this planet.

The formations visible today reveal a lot about conditions in the past, so the rocks are very valuable from a scientific point of view.

However, to the average person, familiar shapes such as a snake, cake, or gate can be seen in every rock.

This phenomenon is based on pareidolia, the essence of which is that a person detects familiar objects or living beings in random stimuli, such as pictures. One of the best known examples of an illusory sense is when we think we recognize animals in the clouds.

The famous Martian face observed in 1976 can also be explained by Pareidolia. We’ve written more about other alien shapes found on the Red Planet here.

By the way, one of the main tasks of Perseverance is to learn more about the past of Mars. The researchers are confident that the device can detect traces of a past life.