Evidence of an oceanic impact and megatsunami sedimentation in Chryse Planitia, Mars.

ABSTRACT: In 1976, NASA's Viking 1 Lander (V1L) was the first spacecraft to operate successfully on the Martian surface. The V1L landed near the terminus of an enormous catastrophic flood channel, Maja Valles. However, instead of the expected megaflood record, its cameras imaged a boulder-strewn surface of elusive origin. We identified a 110-km-diameter impact crater (Pohl) ~ 900 km northeast of the landing site, stratigraphically positioned (a) above catastrophic flood-eroded surfaces formed ~ 3.4 Ga during a period of northern plains oceanic inundation and (b) below the younger of two previously hypothesized megatsunami deposits. These stratigraphic relationships suggest that a marine impact likely formed the crater. Our simulated impact-generated megatsunami run-ups closely match the mapped older

SUBMITTER: Rodriguez JAP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9715952 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature