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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

Mars' surface is speckled with basins thought to have once hosted extensive lakes and rivers. The basins left behind by these long since dried-up bodies of water capture an important record of the geological and environmental conditions endured by the regions and make them prime candidates for exploration and study.

A recent paper, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets, describes a study carried out by Solmaz Adeli, Ernst Hauber, Laetitia Le Deit, and Ralf Jaumann, of an area of Mars' surface known as the Terra Sirenum region, which is thought to have played host to one of the largest lakes on Mars. The body of water, known as the Eridania Lake [phys.org], once covered an area of over a million square kilometres before dividing into smaller isolated lakes and eventually disappearing altogether along with the rest of the water on the planet.

This study focusses on the geological events that occurred before, during and after the transformation of the gargantuan Eridania Lake into its hypothesised smaller lakes by looking closely at four ancient basins. Each of the four basins – Atlantis Chaos, Simois Colles, Caralis Chaos and an unnamed basin referred to in the study as the Northern Basin – hosted its own individual lake following the fragmentation of the Eridania Lake.

Original Submission