The Jezero crater is a paleolake on Mars. Its outlet canyon, carved by overflow flooding, can be seen in the upper right side of the crater. (Credit: NASA/Tim Goudge)
More than 3.5 billion years ago, water flowed freely across the surface of Mars, forming lakes and seas. New research shows how these lakes may have overflowed and burst at their sides, causing flooding so severe it carved out canyons in the Martian surface over the course of just weeks. This new research suggests that the flooding could have drastically shaped and altered the Martian landscape and, potentially, other planets that similarly lack plate tectonics, lead author and postdoctoral researcher Tim Goudge said in a statement. “These breached lakes are fairly common and some of them are quite large, some as large as the Caspian Sea. So we think this style of catastrophic overflow flooding and rapid incision of outlet canyons ...
