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Scientists have discovered evidence that a vast ocean once existed on Mars about 3.5 billion years ago.
This evidence comes in the form of distinctive terrains of the beach, identified by satellite images of the planet’s surface, and when captured from different angles a terrain map can be created.
Researchers have been able to map more than 6,500 km of river ridges apparently carved by rivers, which is likely to have eroded into river deltas or marine channel belts (channels carved into the seabed).
“The big thing we’ve done is think of Mars in terms of its layers,” says geologist Benjamin Cardenas of the University of Pennsylvania, in the paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.