NASA's Curiosity Mars rover made an interesting find when it came across a lake environment, but it is not evidence of past life on the Red Planet.

According to USA Today, Curiosity found a lake formation similar in size to New York's Finger Lakes, only not quite as deep. The Mars lake had low salinity levels, necessary chemicals and just the right acidity to host life, if it ever existed there.

"Is this the smoking gun that says there was life on Mars? No," said NASA soil mineralogist Douglas Ming, co-researcher of the new study, published in the journal Science. "Is this a smoking gun that this was a habitable environment? There's pretty good evidence for that. We have an environment that is very much... like on Earth."

The study researchers announced their findings Monday at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco.

"I've always been an optimist that we will find it someday," said Clark Johnson, an astrobiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was not involved in the study. "This is a wonderful step forward."

The news of Curiosity's latest find comes just after it resumed its ultimate mission of reaching Mount Sharp, the destination at the center of Gale Crater, the rover's landing spot. Curiosity's chief scientist John Grotzinger told BBC News Gale Crater would have been a favorable environment for living organisms if they had existed there.

"For all of us geologists who are very familiar with what the early Earth must have been like, what we see in Gale really doesn't look much different," he said.

The main evidence to support the existence of water on Mars in any research has been the discovery of clay minerals, which can only form in certain conditions.

"I think what's very important here is that we've now made the case that these clay minerals were formed in situ," said Grotzinger. "They were not detrital; they were not blown in. They are representative of the aqueous environment that is suggested by the [look of the rocks], and that environment would have been a habitable one."