Life started on Mars, and thus we are all Martians, new evidence suggests.

For decades, some scientists have theorized that life started on Mars, and it seems they may be correct. They theorize that bacteria, which are able to withstand harsh conditions such as those on Mars, may have hitched a ride on a meteorite and made their way to Earth.

"The evidence seems to be building that we are actually all Martians; that life started on Mars and came to Earth on a rock," Dr. Steven Benner said.

Benner argues that early Earth didn't have the chemical makeup essential to create the earliest forms of life--but Mars did. Benner's theory hinges on molybendum, a mineral that didn't exist on Earth...but likely did on Mars.

A new report, which will be unveiled this week at the 2013 Goldschmidt Conference in Italy by Dr. Stephen Brenner, will present evidence about a mineral called molybdenum, which may be a key to the origin of life. However, the oxidized mineral was not present on Earth when life originated.

"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," Benner said in the statement. "It's yet another piece of evidence which makes it more likely life came to Earth on a Martian meteorite, rather than starting on this planet."

In addition to molybdenum, says Benner, boron may have been a necessary catalyst in the chain for turning organic compounds into actual life forms.

It is likely that boron also didn't exist on water-covered Earth, because it would have been unable to concentrate enough. However, boron has also been found on Marian meteorites. Without molybdenum and boron, organic matter probably would have just turned into something akin to tar.

"It's a long shot," MIT researcher Christopher Carr said in an announcement of the Search for Extraterrestrial Genomes project in 2011, "but if we go to Mars and find life that's related to us, we could have originated on Mars."

"Or if it started here," he said, "it could have been transferred to Mars."