According to a new study published this week in Nature Astronomy, if life existed on Mars billions of years ago, the planet could have been host to methanogenic microbes.
Scientists say that methane may have irreversibly damaged the Martian atmosphere, wiping themselves out in the process.
Even though the Red Planet is barren and cold, it has long been known that the planet was once home to rivers, lakes, and oceans.
The abundance of hydrogen in the planet's atmosphere is thought to have supported methanogenic organisms four billion years ago.
The senior author of the study and professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona applied several models to predict temperatures at both the surface and in the crust.
The goal was to make a model of the Martian crust with its mix of rock and salty water, let gases from the atmosphere diffuse into the ground, and see if methanogens could live with that.
He said that the microbes could have made a living on the planet.
The surface of Mars would have been too cold for the microbes to survive.
The success of these microbes was brief.
According to the study, Mars' atmosphere would have been completely changed by biological activity within a few tens or hundreds of thousands of years. The planet's climate would have been cooled down if hydrogen were removed from the atmosphere.
Our search for ancient life is far from over, despite the theory that shows how much we still have to learn.
There is evidence of ancient floods on Mars.
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