- The findings reveal an “important role of liquid water in the evolution of regions” on Mars.
- NASA is looking for candidates to spend eight months in isolation on a replica of Mars.
Researchers from the University of Zaragoza have found new evidence of the existence of ancient lakes on Mars, natural formations approximately 3.7 billion years old and that could have been interconnected.
The discovery by geologists Ángel García-Arnay and Francisco Gutiérrez, from Unizar’s Earth Sciences department, has been collected in an article published in the popular science journal ‘Geomorphology’.
Researchers have identified ten fan-shaped sedimentary deposits, along with ancient river valleys of the planet, as well as 54 terraces located along the limits of the depressions, as reported by the University of Zaragoza on Thursday in a press release.
The lakes are present in the Nepenthes Mensae region, northwest of Gale Crater, a transition zone between the high and lowlands of Mars, known for being the base of operations for the US Space Agency’s ‘Curiosity’ rover since the year 2012.
The detailed mapping of these morphologies, their spatial distribution, as well as their morphological and morphometric analysis, suggest that the deposits and terraces were probably ancient Gilbert-type deltas and coastal platforms, respectively.
This interpretation is based on its great similarity with its terrestrial equivalents, as well as the detection of clay minerals formed in the presence of liquid water in the front of one of the deltas.
To date the age of the depressions surface, a method of counting the impact craters has been used, which has allowed estimating the existence of these lakes approximately 3.7 billion years ago, during the late Noahic era, with possible processes of reactivation in the Hesperic period, about 3.5 billion years ago.
The findings of researchers from the Research Institute for Environmental Sciences reveal an ” important morphogenetic role that liquid water has played in the evolution of the regions” of Mars, they explained from the University of Zaragoza.