New Evidence For Ancient Ocean on Mars

The idea has been hotly debated among scientists for the past 20 years, ever since Viking Orbiter images revealed possible ancient shorelines near the pole. Later findings even suggested that the primordial ocean--dubbed Oceanus Borealis--could have covered a third of the planet.

But even if the evidence has mounted steadily, fostering our hopes of finding signs of past life on the Red Planet, the case for an ancient Martian ocean remains unsettled.

Now a new study by Lorena Moscardelli, a geologist at the University of Texas, Austin, puts forward yet another line of evidence.

Today, large fields of boulder-size rocks blanket parts of Mars' northern plains. By pointing to analogue geological features on our Earth, Moscardelli suggests that the boulders were delivered to their current locations by catastrophic underwater landslides--bolstering evidence for an ancient Martian ocean.