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Adult/High School–As this engaging and mostly lighthearted tale of the first expedition to Mars begins, three friends and colleagues are sharing what they expect to be their last dig in Montana with paleontologist Dr. Helen Sutter. Joe Buckley and Jackie Secord are graduate students about to embark on engineering careers–Joe with the Ares Project, and Jackie as an astronaut. After a strange fossil is found, anomalies pile up, and A.J. Baker, a genius with new imaging technologies, comes to help document the site. Then a robot explorer he is working with on the Ares Project finds a suspiciously similar fossil on Phobos, the Mars moon, and before long the four are on their way there, along with an equally likable pilot, security officer, and international crew of scientists. Their adventure of discovery and exploration unfolds in intriguing and surprising ways. While the existence of Jurassic-age fossils on Mars is a little hard to swallow at first in such a reality-based nuts-and-bolts type of science fiction, in the end they serve to raise valid questions about the future of humans in space. Besides paleontology, engineering, and space flight, puzzles in linguistics, biology, physics, and evolution further the story, as well as wacky humor, academic rivalries, and even some sweet romances. Science-fiction fans will enjoy a number of in-jokes (such as naming the fossil Bemmius secordeii).–Christine C. Menefee, formerly at Fairfax County Public Library, VACopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.