NASA’s Perseverance Rover Spots Turtle-Shaped Rock in Mars’ Jezero Crater

NASA’s Perseverance rover has caught a glimpse of a turtle-head-shaped formation on Mars that is reminiscent of the animal poking its head out of its shell. The picture was snapped on Sol 1,610, August 31, 2025, at Jezero Crater, by the rover’s Sherloc and Watson instruments, fitted to its robotic arm, which capture visible and ultraviolet images of rock surfaces, Live Science reported. Entirely geological in nature, the turtle-like shape invites curiosity and reveals Mars’s uncanny mimicry of Earthly imagery.

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Captures a ‘Turtle’ on Mars

Live Science reported that its turtle-shaped appearance was created by some unknown geologic process worn away by the action of erosion over time. Its “head,” “shell,” and “front legs” all represent examples of pareidolia, the mind making sense of random shapes by finding familiar patterns.

This is not the first time such suspicious shapes have been seen by Perseverance. Earlier this year it found a rock that looked like a medieval “helmet,” and another that resembled hundreds of spider eggs, reminders of the rover’s talent for revealing the uncanny sculptures of nature on the Red Planet.

From Whimsical Shapes to Scientific Clues in Jezero Crater

But when scientists talk about these shapes, they’re not exactly playing. Each one, Wopmay, a turtle-shaped rock, that mission scientists nicknamed after a Canadian island, among them, tells a story about Mars’s geological history, like wind erosion, or past activity of water or migration of rocks, that the scientists use to puzzle out what the environment of Mars might have been like at the time and whether it could have been habitable.

While Perseverance wanders Jezero Crater, it keeps stumbling on enigmatic finds that pique the interest of the science community and the public. Of course, they aren’t evidence of life, but the only slightly anthropomorphic signposts to show that even the most rigorous scientific enterprise seems to involve quite a bit of human imagination and wonder.