Using a laser and X-rays, the NASA rover Curiosity identified a rock named Jake as a form of basalt, similar to volcanic rocks found in ocean-island settings on Earth.

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has indentified a type of rock scientists have never seen on Mars before, but it's one familiar to geologists on Earth.

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The Martian rock, a form of basalt, has a composition very similar to volcanic rocks found in ocean-island settings such as Hawaii and the Azores, as well as in rift zones regions where Earth's continents split and begin separating into separate land masses.

The rock, named Jake Matijevic for a key member of the rover engineering team who passed away shortly after Curiosity arrived on the red planet, can form in a number of ways, says Edward Stolper, provost of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and a member of Curiosity's science team.

On Earth, this kind of rock forms as magma cools and crystallizes under relatively high pressure and with relatively high concentrations of water dissolved in the magma, he explains, adding that when the molten leftovers erupt, they tend to erupt explosively.

The release, during volcanic eruptions, of water dissolved in magma is one pathway for water vapor a greenhouse gas to enrich and warm a planet's atmosphere. Indeed, Curiosity's mission aims to see if Gale Crater ever could have hosted microbial life a prospect that would have required the presence of liquid water in the crater.

On Mars, the process that formed Jake is unclear.

"We have one rock," Dr. Stolper said at a briefing Thursday. Sitting on the floor of Gale Crater, where fine soils and layered, sedimentary rocks seem to be the norm, Jake appears to be an interloper, removed from its original geologic setting.

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NASA rover Curiosity finds a rock not seen before on Mars (+video)