Geological history of Mars
The geological history of Mars employs observations, indirect and direct measurements, and various inference techniques to estimate the physical evolution of Mars. Methods dating back to 17th century techniques developed by Nicholas Steno, including the so-called law of superposition and stratigraphy, used to estimate the geological histories of Earth and the Moon, are being actively applied to the data available from several Martian observational and measurement resources. These include the landers, orbiting platforms, Earth-based observations, and Martian meteorites.
Observations of the surfaces of many Solar System bodies reveals important clues about their evolution. For example, a lava flow that spreads out and fills a large impact crater is likely to be younger than the crater. On the other hand, a small crater on top of the same lava flow is likely to be younger than both the lava and the larger crater since it can be surmised to have been the product of a later, unobserved, geological event. This principle, called the law of superposition, and other principles of stratigraphy, first formulated by Nicholas Steno in the 17th century, allowed geologists of the 19th century to divide the history of the Earth into the familiar eras of Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic. The same methodology was later applied to the Moon and then to Mars.
Another stratigraphic principle used on planets where impact craters are well preserved is that of crater number density. The number of craters greater than a given size per unit surface area (usually million km2) provides a relative age for that surface. Heavily cratered surfaces are old, and sparsely cratered surfaces are young. Old surfaces have a lot of big craters, and young surfaces have mostly small craters or none at all.
These stratigraphic concepts form the basis for the Martian geologic timescale.
Stratigraphy establishes the relative ages of layers of rock and sediment by denoting differences in composition (solids, liquids, and trapped gasses). Assumptions are often incorporated about the rate of deposition, which generates a range of potential age estimates across any set of observed sediment layers.
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