Mars Might Have Been Covered in Lakes in the Ancient Past universetoday storybywill
An example of a large, impact crater-hosted lake on Mars ) and a small, permafrost-hosted lake . Credit: ESA/JPL/NASA/ASU/MSSS, current research has focused on larger bodies of water on Mars, potentially neglecting the many smaller lakes that may have existed there:
Lakebeds are currently one of the prime targets for robotic explorers on Mars because ancient lakes would possess all the ingredients for microbial light – including water, nutrients, and energy sources like light . Today, the lakebeds of these ancient bodies of water contain sedimentary deposits rich in iron/magnesium clay minerals and carbonates, as well as sulfates, silica, and chlorides.
As a result, Michalski and his colleagues argue that large, ancient, environmentally diverse lakes would make a much more promising target for future exploration. “Not all lakes are created equal,” said Michalski. “In other words, some Martian lakes would be more interesting for microbial life than others because some of the lakes were large, deep, long-lived, and had a wide range of environments such as hydrothermal systems that could have been conducive to the formation of simple life.
However, there is also evidence that lakes existed on Mars during more recent geological periods but left fewer traces. These include paleolakes in the Hesperian Period and shallow marshy lakes during the Amazonian . These features would be similar to those found on Earth where similarly cold conditions exist and would likely resemble shallow lakes found in drier regions and thermoklasts that occur during permafrost thaws .
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