Ancient volcanoes adjacent to deep water lakes on Mars could have presented areas of habitability on the planet 4 billion years ago, according to a new paper.
“The large basins in this region once hosted a lake system known as the Eridania paleolake, which was up to around a mile deep when the lake was at its greatest extent,” said Aster Cowart, Planetary Science Institute Postdoctoral Research Scientist and a coauthor on “Diverse volcanism and crustal recycling on early Mars” that appeared in Nature Astronomy. “Long-lived volcanic sources next to abundant water may have fueled hydrothermal systems that could have nurtured life. At the very least, these findings give us a larger number of places we can look for evidence of life.”
The presence of these features on the Martian surface challenges the idea of Mars as a planet whose tectonic features were almost exclusively created through impact cratering or from mantle-derived lavas piling up on the surface within its large volcanic regions. “What we see in the Eridania region suggests more complex forms of tectonic activity driven by the long-term evolution of its crust were also at work,” Cowart said.
“We found a very diverse volcanic and tectonic landscape in the Eridania region on Mars. We see large fault-defined basins, long linear mountain ranges where the crust appears to have buckled upwards, and styles of volcanic activity that are otherwise rare on the Martian surface,” Cowart said.
“The rocks associated with volcanic activity are particularly interesting, as their composition appears to reflect repeated melting of the Martian crust. We think this landscape reflects the processes associated with very early style of crustal modification and recycling that Earth also passed through during its evolution from a single-plate planet to one shaped by plate tectonics,” Cowart said.
Elevation data draped onto daytime infrared data illustrates that three subbasins are separated only by a large antiformal structure. Black arrows indicate dips direction of layers. Below, a color imaged draped over topography shows steeply dip[ping layers in the north flank of the antiform, a type of fold which closes upwards and its limbs dip away from the hinge.
A color imaged draped over topography shows steeply dipping layers in the north flank of the antiform, a type of fold which closes upwards and its limbs dip away from the hinge.
