{"id":590120,"date":"2026-04-17T17:14:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T17:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/590120\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T17:14:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T17:14:18","slug":"scientists-have-just-discovered-a-new-feature-on-mars-that-may-have-held-an-ocean-after-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/590120\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Have Just Discovered a New Feature on Mars That May Have Held an Ocean After All"},"content":{"rendered":"

New research has revealed a feature on Mars that could confirm the planet once had an ocean. Scientists have identified what they believe is Mars\u2019 version of a continental shelf, a stable geological feature that points to a large, long-lasting ocean.<\/p>\n

Mars\u2019 northern hemisphere has long been thought to be a likely spot for an ancient ocean, mainly because it\u2019s lower in elevation and has fewer craters than the southern hemisphere. <\/p>\n

But proving the existence of a shoreline has been tricky, as previous evidence didn\u2019t match up and was hard to interpret. Instead of focusing on shifting shorelines, scientists decided to look at a more stable feature: the coastal shelf.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s Happening to Our Shorelines?<\/p>\n

Shorelines have often been used as signs of ancient oceans, but they\u2019re not always reliable. Dr. Abdallah Zaki<\/a>, now at the University of Texas at Austin, explained that shorelines change over time due to things like geological activity and tidal movements.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf people really want to search for oceans, they shouldn\u2019t look for shorelines because they are not really good indicators. They move really fast, and that\u2019s why they\u2019re not even indicators of [ancient] lakes on Earth,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"ThisThis map shows the possible location of an ancient coastal shelf on Mars. Credit: Caltech\/A. Zaki<\/p>\n

Because of this, they don\u2019t always reflect ancient bodies of water accurately. On Earth, the continental shelf, an area of the seabed that\u2019s shallow and stable, has been a much more reliable indicator of long-lasting oceans. Dr. Zaki, who used to work at Caltech, along with his supervisor Professor Michael Lamb<\/a>, applied this idea to Mars<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf Mars did have an ocean, it dried up a long time ago \u2014 possibly several billion years ago, more than half of the age of the planet itself,\u201d Lamb explained in a university statement<\/a>. \u201cThere is hardly anything on Earth that is that old; anything on Mars from that time has been eroded by billions of years of wind blowing, volcanoes erupting, and other disturbances removing subtle features. We wanted to find a better topographic feature than shorelines that could be evidence for an ocean.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Red Planet\u2019s Mysterious Shoreline<\/p>\n

By analyzing Mars\u2019 topography, the researchers found a region in the northern hemisphere that looked similar to Earth\u2019s continental shelf. This area has gentle slopes and low curvature, suggesting that an ocean might have existed<\/a> there in the distant past. <\/p>\n

\u201cWithin the zone that has low values of slopes and curvature, we found evidence of coastal deposits, deltas, and depositional rivers. This is common. You see, actually, the continental shelf [on Earth] has all these: it has deltas, it has coastal deposits, and it has some flowing deposits bloomed from the rivers globally.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"ThisThis topographic map of Mars shows its varying elevations, with red areas representing higher elevations and blue indicating lower regions. Credit: NASA\/JPL<\/p>\n

Unlike Earth, the Red Planet does not have tectonic plates<\/a>, meaning its surface doesn\u2019t shift in the same way. This makes the newly discovered shelf on the Red Planet particularly stable, and it\u2019s likely that it hasn\u2019t changed much over time. The presence of this shelf suggests that Mars could have had an ocean that lasted for millions of years, long enough to potentially support life.<\/p>\n

Could Mars Be Our Next Home?<\/p>\n

The study, published in\u00a0Nature<\/a>, focused on stable features like the coastal shelf as a better way to search for signs of ancient life on Mars. This new method could help scientists more accurately identify past water bodies and, potentially, find places where life might have existed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a strong additional piece of evidence supporting a northern ocean on Mars,\u201d Zaki stated, \u201cbut there\u2019s plenty of follow-up work to be done for rovers to examine deposits and for further analysis of satellite data.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ThisThis image compares the topography of Earth\u2019s continental shelf (top) with potential Martian coastal features (bottom). Credit: Nature<\/p>\n

This coastal shelf could be a prime spot for future missions hoping to uncover Mars\u2019 past, and find out if life ever existed there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New research has revealed a feature on Mars that could confirm the planet once had an ocean. Scientists…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":590121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[79],"class_list":{"0":"post-590120","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=590120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/590121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=590120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=590120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=590120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}