Mounds on Mars that could be from ancient hot springs are described in a new study, after setting the astrobiology community abuzz last spring.

Hydrothermal springs on Earth, like those in Yellowstone National Park, harbor what scientists figure are the closest relatives to the original organisms that lived on our planet. Finding these features on Mars (or any other planet) could have big implications for the question of extraterrestrial life.

Mars has many features that suggest the planet was once warmer and wetter. At the least, the ancient vents — if that's what they are — would make great places to look for signs of past life.

The features found on Mars, imaged on the edge of the Arabia Terra region by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), have "proved to be a very close match" to hydrothermal springs on Earth, said study co-author Carlton Allen, of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The findings, announced today, are detailed in the new issue of the journal Astrobiology, and were presented last April.

The shapes of the mounds and the channels that flow away from them are similar to those seen in the hot spring areas of Yellowstone, Allen told SPACE.com today. They are situated in a deep crater with steep slope and could have been fed by underground water sources on ancient Mars, which is thought to have been considerably wetter than its present-day incarnation, he added.