Investigating Sedimentary Rocks to Understand Past Wet Climate of Mars

• Main Author: Harper, Emily
• Format: Others
• Published: ScholarWorks@UNO 2015
• Subjects: Earth Sciences; Sedimentology
• Online Access: http://scholarworks.uno.edu/honors_theses/70; http://scholarworks.uno.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1068&context=honors_theses

The “deltaic” geomorphology in the Eberswalde Crater is often considered a “smoking gun” for the warm-and-wet ancient climate of Mars. The Crater displays sedimentary features, which many argue, can only be found in a river-delta system (Bhattacharya et al., 2005). However, with the advent of high-resolution images, the Eberswalde Crater delta’s geomorphology has been revealed to be more complicated than could be seen previously. These high-resolution data suggest that the development of the Eberswalde delta is likely more episodic (Schieber 2007). While better resolution data has placed doubt on the wet Mars hypothesis at the Eberswalde Crater, the opposite is true of the Gale Crater. Recent images acquired by the Mars Curiosity Rover have revolutionized the hypotheses explaining the formation of Mount Sharp in the Gale Crater. The new prevailing hypothesis is that Mount Sharp was formed by a series of crater lakes (NASA, 2014). This study provides evidence supporting the crater lake hypothesis, using bedding architecture diagrams, facies diagrams, lithologic logs, paleocurrent map and rose diagram, and minimum water depth estimations of the exposed sedimentary layers. Reconstructing a detailed depositional history of the Gale Crater Lake provides a window into a more ancient Mars where life could have evolved in a wet habitable climate that is absent today.