HiRISE image illustrating Steno's law of superposition. The dark-toned lava flow overlies (is younger than) the light-toned terrain at right. The ejecta of the crater at centre overlies both units, indicating that the crater is younger than both units.
The geological history of Mars follows the physical evolution of Mars as substantiated by observations, indirect and direct measurements, and various inference techniques. Methods dating back to 17th-century techniques developed by Nicholas Steno, including the so-called law of superposition and stratigraphy, used to estimate the geological histories of Earth and the Moon, are being actively applied to the data available from several Martian observational and measurement resources. These include landers, orbiting platforms, Earth-based observations, and Martian meteorites.
Observations of the surfaces of many Solar System bodies reveal important clues about their evolution. For example, a lava flow that spreads out and fills a large impact crater is likely to be younger than the crater. On the other hand, a small crater on top of the same lava flow is likely to be younger than both the lava and the larger crater since it can be surmised to have been the product of a later, unobserved, geological event. This principle, called the law of superposition, along with other principles of stratigraphy first formulated by Nicholas Steno in the 17th century, allowed geologists of the 19th century to divide the history of the Earth into the familiar eras of Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic. The same methodology was later applied to the Moon[1] and then to Mars.[2]
Another stratigraphic principle used on planets where impact craters are well preserved is that of crater number density. The number of craters greater than a given size per unit surface area (usually a million km2) provides a relative age for that surface. Heavily cratered surfaces are old, and sparsely cratered surfaces are young. Old surfaces have many big craters, and young surfaces have mostly small craters or none at all. These stratigraphic concepts form the basis for the Martian geologic timescale.
^For reviews of this topic, see:
Mutch, T. A. (1970). Geology of the Moon: A Stratigraphic View. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Wilhelms, D. E. (1987). The Geologic History of the Moon. USGS Professional Paper 1348.
^Scott, D. H.; Carr, M. H. (1978). Geologic Map of Mars. Reston, Virginia: United States Geological Survey. Miscellaneous Investigations Set Map 1-1083.
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