Publication Date:
2015-10-10
Description:
The landforms of northern Gale crater on Mars expose thick sequences of sedimentary rocks. Based on images obtained by the Curiosity rover, we interpret these outcrops as evidence for past fluvial, deltaic, and lacustrine environments. Degradation of the crater wall and rim probably supplied these sediments, which advanced inward from the wall, infilling both the crater and an internal lake basin to a thickness of at least 75 meters. This intracrater lake system probably existed intermittently for thousands to millions of years, implying a relatively wet climate that supplied moisture to the crater rim and transported sediment via streams into the lake basin. The deposits in Gale crater were then exhumed, probably by wind-driven erosion, creating Aeolis Mons (Mount Sharp).〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Grotzinger, J P -- Gupta, S -- Malin, M C -- Rubin, D M -- Schieber, J -- Siebach, K -- Sumner, D Y -- Stack, K M -- Vasavada, A R -- Arvidson, R E -- Calef, F 3rd -- Edgar, L -- Fischer, W F -- Grant, J A -- Griffes, J -- Kah, L C -- Lamb, M P -- Lewis, K W -- Mangold, N -- Minitti, M E -- Palucis, M -- Rice, M -- Williams, R M E -- Yingst, R A -- Blake, D -- Blaney, D -- Conrad, P -- Crisp, J -- Dietrich, W E -- Dromart, G -- Edgett, K S -- Ewing, R C -- Gellert, R -- Hurowitz, J A -- Kocurek, G -- Mahaffy, P -- McBride, M J -- McLennan, S M -- Mischna, M -- Ming, D -- Milliken, R -- Newsom, H -- Oehler, D -- Parker, T J -- Vaniman, D -- Wiens, R C -- Wilson, S A -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2015 Oct 9;350(6257):aac7575. doi: 10.1126/science.aac7575.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Division of Geologic and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA. ; Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK. ; Malin Space Science Systems, Post Office Box 910148, San Diego, CA 92121, USA. ; Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California-Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA. ; Department of Geological Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. ; Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California-Davis, Davis, CA 95616, USA. ; Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA. ; Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA. ; Astrogeology Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey, Flagstaff, AZ 86001, USA. ; Center for Earth and Planetary Studies, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20560, USA. ; Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA. ; Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA. ; Laboratoire Planetologie et Geodynamique de Nantes-Le Centre National de la Recherche, Unite Mixte de Recherche 6112 and Universite de Nantes, 44322 Nantes, France. ; Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA. ; Department of Geology, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 98225, USA. ; Department of Space Sciences, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035, USA. ; NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA. ; Department of Earth and Planetary Science, University of California-Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA. ; Laboratoire de Geologie de Lyon, Universite de Lyon, 69364 Lyon, France. ; Department of Geology and Geophysics, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA. ; Department of Physics, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1, Canada. ; Department of Geosciences, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794-2100, USA. ; Department of Geological Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA. ; Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division, NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX 77058, USA. ; Department of Geological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA. ; Institute of Meteoritics, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131 USA. ; LZ Technology, NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX 77058, USA. ; Space Remote Sensing, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87544, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26450214" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Climate
;
Exhumation
;
*Lakes
;
*Mars
;
Paleontology
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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