Geo-chemist Professor Steven Benner, from The Westheimer Institute for Science and Technology in the US, said: "The evidence seems to be building that we are actually all Martians; that life started on Mars and came to Earth on a rock."
An element believed to be crucial to the origin of life would only have been available on the surface of the Red Planet. These "seeds" of life probably arrived on Earth in meteorites blasted off Mars by impacts or volcanic eruptions.
Speaking at the Goldschmidt 2013 Conference in Florence, Italy, he said: "It's lucky that we ended up here nevertheless, as certainly Earth has been the better of the two planets for sustaining life.
Prof Benner said the element molybdenum was thought to be a catalyst that helped organic molecules develop into the first living things. This form of molybdenum couldn't have been available on Earth at the time life first began, because three billion years ago the surface of the Earth had very little oxygen, but Mars did.
Analysis of a Martian meteorite recently showed that there was boron on Mars and that the oxidised form of molybdenum was there too.
Another reason why life would have struggled to start on early Earth was that it was likely to have been covered by water.
So did these rocks land in our oceans and started Darwin's pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection?
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