New York (PTI): Liquid water remained on Mars' surface a billion years more than scientists believed and played an important role in shaping the planet's surface and perhaps hosting life, new data received from the American space agency's reconnaissance orbiter suggests.

Researchers examining data from the orbiter's Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars have found evidence of hydrated silica, commonly known as opal.

The hydrated, or water-containing, mineral deposits are telltale signs of where and when water was present on ancient Mars, the space agency, NASA, said.

"This is an exciting discovery because it extends the time range for liquid water on Mars, and the places where it might have supported life," said Scott Murchie, the spectrometer's principal investigator at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

"The identification of opaline silica tells us that water may have existed as recently as two billion years ago."

Until now, only two major groups of hydrated minerals, phyllosilicates and hydrated sulfates, had been observed by spacecraft orbiting Mars.

Clay-like phyllosilicates formed more than 3.5 billion years ago where igneous rock came into long-term contact with water. During the next several hundred million years, until approximately three billion years ago, hydrated sulfates formed from the evaporation of salty and sometimes acidic water, NASA reported.