panel doesn't sound THAT momentous
Those little channels and pores would also be consistent with water chemically eroding an existing layer of sediment, and is consistent with the notion that the spheres grew within the matrix by somehow precipitating out. Think of what ground water can do to limestone on earth.
If they really thought they had found fossils, I suspect this news conference would be much higher profile. O'Keefe, maybe Bush or Cheney, pitched in a way to encourage the regular networks to carry it live. And they'd have some astrobiology people on the panel.