{"id":207442,"date":"2025-02-28T09:19:13","date_gmt":"2025-02-28T15:19:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/ancient-ocean-coastal-deposits-imaged-on-mars"},"modified":"2025-02-28T09:19:13","modified_gmt":"2025-02-28T15:19:13","slug":"ancient-ocean-coastal-deposits-imaged-on-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/ancient-ocean-coastal-deposits-imaged-on-mars","title":{"rendered":"Ancient ocean coastal deposits imaged on Mars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/ancient-ocean-coastal-deposits-imaged-on-mars2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The northern lowlands of early Mars could have contained a significant quantity of liquid water. However, the ocean hypothesis remains controversial due to the lack of conclusive evidence from the Martian subsurface. We use data from the Zhurong Rover Penetrating Radar on the southern Utopia Planitia to identify subsurface dipping reflectors indicative of an ancient prograding shoreline. The reflectors dip unidirectionally with inclinations in the range 6\u00b0 to 20\u00b0 and are imaged to a thickness of 10 to 35 m along an uninterrupted 1.3 km northward shoreline-perpendicular traverse. The consistent dip inclinations, absence of dissection by fluvial channels along the extended traverse, and low permittivity of the sediments are consistent with terrestrial coastal deposits\u2014and discount fluvial, aeolian, or magmatic origins favored elsewhere on Mars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The northern lowlands of early Mars could have contained a significant quantity of liquid water. However, the ocean hypothesis remains controversial due to the lack of conclusive evidence from the Martian subsurface. We use data from the Zhurong Rover Penetrating Radar on the southern Utopia Planitia to identify subsurface dipping reflectors indicative of an ancient [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207442\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}