Mars, the so-called “red planet”, may be a vast wasteland, but scientists have discovered the remains of ancient river systems that once had the right conditions to support life.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania reanalyzed data collected by NASA’s Curiosity rover in Gale Crater, finding that the formations were habitable bodies of water far more abundant than previously thought. The team spotted shifting marks in the topography that could be “markers” of ancient river deposits in craters.

These bodies of water are also thought to behave like those on Earth — “important for life, chemical cycles, nutrient cycles and sediment cycles,” the researchers said.

Benjamin Cardenas, assistant professor of geosciences at Penn State and lead author of the study, said: “We find evidence that Mars was probably a river planet. “We see signs of this all over the planet.”

NASA

The study was conducted by mapping Martian soil erosion using a computer model trained on satellite data. The data came from NASA’s Curiosity rover and 3D scans of layers of rock called strata that had been deposited over millions of years beneath the Gulf of Mexico’s seafloor.

In designing their computer model, Cárdenas and his team found a new use for 25 years of scans of the Earth’s stratigraphy collected by oil companies. The team simulated a Martian-like erosion using 3D scans of real, recorded stratigraphy on Earth.

The researchers said the analysis revealed a new interpretation for common Martian crater formations that, until now, had never been associated with eroded river deposits.

NASA

“We can learn a lot about Mars by better understanding how these fluvial deposits can be interpreted stratigraphically – understanding the rocks today as layers of sediment deposited over time,” Cardenas said.

“What we see today on Mars are the remnants of an active geologic history, not some landscape frozen in time.”

“The study suggests that there could be unknown fluvial deposits elsewhere on the planet, and that an even larger portion of the Martian sedimentary record could have been built by rivers during a habitable period of Mars’ history,” Cardenas said. “On Earth, river corridors are so important to life, chemical cycles, nutrient cycles and sediment cycles. “Everything points to these rivers behaving similarly on Mars.”