Scientists find evidence of 400-foot tsunamis on Mars

Massive tsunamis may have swept across ancient Mars and shaped the landscape in the process, according to a new paper in the journal Scientific Reports.

The Martian tsunamis, thought to have reached around 400 feet high as they raced over the planet’s surface, could have been caused by two large meteorites slamming into Mars.

The giant waves may have been strong enough to mold a lot of the ancient coastlines on Mars, the study team said.

It has been suggested that the lowlands of the northern hemisphere of Mars saw epic flooding around 3.4 billion years ago, establishing an enormous ocean that possibly covered many million square miles. But researchers have been baffled by the absence of a related shoreline and its predicted features.

Explaining anomalies on the Martian surface

In the new study, researchers said it is difficult to see any ancient shorelines because the tsunamis buried them, lodging sediments up to hundreds of miles inland.

Using cameras on the Mars Odyssey Orbiter, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Global Surveyor, the researchers mapped an area that is believed to have been the ancient ocean, featuring a border between highland and lowland region. They evaluated two groups of deposits in detail. One appeared to have a large range of boulders, while the other seems to be composed of water-ice.

The researchers said the deposits are the footprints of two tsunamis that rushed over the Martian landscape, smothering the ancient shoreline. The team used computer models to indicate that such tsunamis could have been produced by large asteroid strikes, producing waves with an average height of more than 160 feet, with the largest reaching nearly 400 feet high.

“We link the origin of the tsunamis to meteorite impacts that produced craters 30 kilometres in diameter,” J. Alexis Palmero Rodriguez, of the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona, told The Guardian.

Rodriguez added that such asteroid strikes likely occurred over the entire ocean about once every three million years.

“The finding of the two Martian tsunami deposits imply that the northern ocean must have existed,” Rodriguez said. “In addition, their range of morphologies allow us to investigate climate change during the lifetime of that ocean.”

“Although we have only identified evidence for two tsunami events in our study area, other regions in the northern plains likely experienced similar tsunami-related coastal resurfacing,” the study team noted in their report.

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Image credit: Alexis Rodriguez 

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