Sculptor Roman Villarreal, whose portfolio includes works on Chicago’s South Side and at Steelworkers Park, chiseled the turtles out of 15,00-pound chunks of limestone.
The sample, called Sapphire Canyon, was collected by the Perseverance rover from rocky outcrops on the edges of the Neretva Vallis river valley, a region sculpted by water that once flowed into Jezero Crater more than 3 billion years ago.
—
Ashley Strickland,
CNN Money,
10 Sep. 2025
Viral posts present them as a lost civilization’s handiwork; geologists call them nunataks, mountain summits standing above the ice, and, in some cases, glacial horns whose sharp faces were sculpted by erosion.
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