Ancient life may be just one possible explanation for Mars rover's latest discovery

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(CNN)In the search for life beyond Earth, NASA's Curiosity rover has been on a nearly decade-long mission to determine if Mars was ever habitable for living organisms.

A new analysis of sediment samples collected by the rover revealed the presence of carbon -- and the possible existence of ancient life on the red planet is just one potential explanation for why it may be there.

Carbon is the foundation for all of life on Earth, and the carbon cycle is the natural process of recycling carbon atoms. On our home planet, carbon atoms go through a cycle as they travel from the atmosphere to the ground and back to the atmosphere. Most of our carbon is in rocks and sediment and the rest is in the global ocean, atmosphere and organisms, according to NOAA, or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

That's why carbon atoms -- with their cycle of recycling -- are tracers of biological activity on Earth. So they could be used to help researchers determine if life existed on ancient Mars.

When these atoms are measured inside another substance, like Martian sediment, they can shed light on a planet's carbon cycle, no matter when it occurred.

Learning more about the origin of this newly detected Martian carbon could also reveal the process of carbon cycling on Mars.

A study detailing these findings published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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