Figure - PMC

Skip to main content

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

View full-text article in PMC

. 2019 Feb 25;9:4045. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-39632-1

Search in PMC
Search in PubMed
View in NLM Catalog
Add to search

© The Author(s) 2019

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

PMC Copyright notice

(A) Perspective sketches depicting the paleohydrological reconstruction of the SIB’s northwestern part and adjoining areas of Simud Valles. Panel (B) shows the sketched region’s context and location. Notice that the north direction is towards the bottom right. (1) View of an inland sea margin within the northwestern part of the SIB produced by the progressive impoundment of cataclysmic floods below the drainage divide at the −3,800 m elevation separating the basin and Simud Valles. (2) Floods propagating over the sea produce spillover marine discharges onto Simud and Tiu Valles, which reach the Pathfinder landing site and produce an ocean within the northern plains. (3) Following the cataclysmic floods, an inland sea and a northern plains ocean form. Both marine bodies share the same upper shoreline levels at the −3,800 m elevation, indicating the presence of an interconnected groundwater table at that time (double-headed arrow). (4) Extensive marine sedimentary deposits, with an upper distribution limited by the drainage divide, are left behind within the SIB following the sea’s disappearance. (B) Paleogeographic reconstruction including the two marine bodies formed after the cataclysmic floods (#3 in Panel A). The Pathfinder landing site (crosshair symbol) is located on an enormous spillway that connected the inland sea and the northern ocean. The blue mask over the digital elevation model corresponds to the reconstructed extents of the inland sea and the northern plains ocean. The base map is a MOLA digital elevation model (460 m/pixel) centered at 5°31′17″N, 30°51′24″W. Credit: MOLA Science Team, MSS, JPL, NASA.