Rock Shrimp on Mars!

Since 2004, like so many, I have perused the raw images flowing back from MER's Spirit and Opportunity in search of the eye candy that rolls in so very regularly. For MSL Curiosity, there will be no interruption in service...

The follwing is part of a larger NASA image, located here:

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/00003/mcam/0003ML0000094000E1_DXXX.jpg

Dead center of this color photo is an odd looking 'rock' that upon closer examination, bears some odd resemblance to an earthly shrimp.

For the purpose of this examination, we cropped and blew the oddity several times.

Of course, clouds can take on any sort of configuration and the human ability to make them into something other than what they are, is called ' pareidolia'.

pareidolia - the imagined perception of a pattern or meaning where it does not actually exist, as in considering the moon to have human features

URL: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pareidolia

But still and all, it is an interesting bit of eye candy and one that will likely be found by others as time goes by.

Addendum:

The location of this oddity is close enough to one of the areas that was hit by the rocket blast during landing that... we might be seeing our first deceased Martian lifeform that was killed when it was blown out of an underground burrow and exposed in the harsh Martian environment.

Just a thought.

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