Scientists discover 'ghost dunes' on Mars

Scientists discover 'ghost dunes' on Mars

5 years ago
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https://phys.org/news/2018-07-scientists-ghost-dunes-mars.html

Ghost dunes were first discovered on Earth on the Snake River Plain in eastern Idaho in 2016. The new study identified similar ghost dunes in satellite images of Hellas basin and Noctis Labyrinthus on Mars. Dunes are a common feature on the wind-blown surface of the Red Planet, but the new study is the first report of preserved dune casts on Mars.

"Any one of these pits is not enough to tell you that it's a dune, or from an ancient dune field, but when you put them all together, they have so many commonalities with dunes on Mars and on Earth that you have to employ some kind of fantastic explanation to explain them as anything other than dunes," said Mackenzie Day, a planetary geomorphologist at the University of Washington in Seattle and an author of the new study.