LONDON - Life on Mars? Well, bizarre images have emerged showing a mystery female figure walking down a hill on the arid planet.

The photo of what looks like a naked woman with her arm outstretched was among several taken on the red planet and sent back to Earth by NASA's Mars explorer Spirit. The 'Daily Mail' reported on the photo Wednesday, citing buzz created by an unnamed Web site.

The image stoked renewed interest in the question of whether there really is life on Mars.

As one enthusiast put it on the Daily Mail's Web site, "These pictures are amazing. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw what appears to be a naked alien running around on Mars."
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It turns out, it's just a rock. In his blog, MSNBC.com science editor Alan Boyle quotes Cornell astronomer Jim Bell, who heads the scientific team behind the Mars rovers' panoramic cameras. "It's a funky little bizarre wind-carved rock formation," Bell said. "It's not unusual at all." Bell has apparently become very familiar with the image, having received dozens of calls from reporters asking about what some describe as a mermaid or Bigfoot.

The news of the mystery woman on Mars came just days after a team of French scientists offered up some more scientifically based information, claiming to have discovered proof that the red planet possesses high-level dense clouds of dry ice, which scud across its orange sky.

Using data obtained by the OMEGA spectrometer on board ESA's Mars Express, the team found the existence of the ice clouds which sometimes become so dense that they throw quite dark shadows on the dusty surface of the red planet.

"This is the first time that carbon dioxide ice clouds on Mars have been imaged and identified from above. This is important because the images tell us not only about their shape, but also their size and density.

"Previously, we had to rely on indirect information. However, it is very difficult to separate the signals coming from the clouds, atmosphere and surface," according to lead scientist Franck Montmessin of the Service d'Aeronomie at University of Versailles.