NASA’s Perseverance rover spots ‘shark fin’ and a ‘crab claw’ on Mars

DAILY MAIL

NASA’s Perseverance rover spots a ‘shark fin’ and a ‘crab claw’ on Mars

• NASA’s new picture is the latest example of a phenomenon known as pareidolia
• Where brain wants to make sense of what eyes see so creates something not real

Looking at this new picture from NASA‘s Perseverance rover, you’d be forgiven for thinking there’s something fishy afoot on the Red Planet.

That’s because the car-sized robot has snapped an image of two separate boulders resembling a shark fin and a crab claw.

The US space agency shared this latest discovery on X (formerly known as Twitter), prompting a wave of replies from space fans who joked that the crab-like rock was the remains of the ‘Almighty Great Cosmic Crab’.

Others said the ‘claw’ looked more like a coffee bean or the head of a turtle ‘digging a hole for its eggs’, while some quipped that the shark fin might actually be the ‘back plates’ of a Stegosaurus.

The photos, which were taken last month, are the latest example of a phenomenon known as pareidolia — where the human brain wants to make sense of what the eyes see so creates a meaning which isn’t real.

Most famously with Mars, this happened in 1976 when NASA’s Viking 1 spacecraft captured an image of what looked like a face carved into the surface of the Red Planet. 

The US space agency made clear when it released the picture to the public that it was an illusion caused by shadows, but that didn’t stop some claiming that the face was the work of an extraterrestrial species.

It wasn’t until 20 years later that NASA tried to put this feverish speculation to bed.

In 1998, the agency’s Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) captured images of the so-called ‘Face on Mars’ which were 10 times sharper than Viking 1, revealing it to be a much more natural-looking rocky outcrop.

Not everybody was convinced, however.

Some conspiracy theorists clung to the idea that the images had been obscured by haze, only for NASA to once and for all prove in 2001 that it was a common geological feature known as a butte, or mesa, which also exist on Earth.

‘We photographed the Face as soon as we could get a good shot at it,’ said chief scientist for NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, Jim Garvin. 

‘It reminds me most of Middle Butte in the Snake River Plain of Idaho. 

‘That’s a lava dome that takes the form of an isolated mesa about the same height as the Face on Mars.’