An ancient ocean in Mars?

Teardrop-shaped islands found on Mars may have been formed underwater, researchers claimed.

A research team of University of Texas in Austin stated that the geological features on the red planet developed in an aquatic environment, much like erosional remnants on earth.

Photographs, which support their claim, show the eroded valleys and channels that were taken from the Mars Odyssey spacecraft in 2001.

Lorena Moscardelli, the lead author of a paper in the July Geology, states that the teardrop-shaped islands resemble the sea-floor mounds off the coast of Trinidad. These erosional remnants form when mixtures of sediment and water flow around the mud volcano and gather on the opposite side, the Daily Mail reported.

Moscardelli believes that both structures underwent a similar process to evolve into encrusted structures of sediment and water, shaped by crater impacts.

Five to 50km in length and three to 250 square kilometers in area, the size of the islands indicates more resemblance to features that were formed by erosion underwater than to those carved by air. The study also revealed that their triangular shapes can only occur underwater, further strengthening the possibility that a body of water may have existed in Mars.

'Most analogies between Earth and Mars are made using continental (on land) data sets or environments. I am providing for the first time, as far as I know, a deep-water terrestrial analogue,' Moscardelli claims.

The breakthrough could add to evidence that life was once present on the planet.

Different from previous analogies made between Earth and Mars, the one Moscardelli is making is based on "a deep-water terrestrial analogue" for the first time.