New Shiney thing on Mars Spotted.

[Jason]

And if that mountain was under water at one stage then that could be another explanation.

And if humans used to live on Mars and God flooded it then transported the ark to Earth then that could be another explanation?

[pErvinalia]

I think you've got it.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I'm about 650 feet above sea level here, and we have huge amounts of sedimentation in the form of limestone. Sometimes I look around and try to picture this area under 300 feet of water with dinosaurs swimming through it.

[mistermack]

Yeh, but on earth, you get sedimentary rocks up in the mountains, because they are forced up there by the crumpling of tectonic plates, as they crash into each other.
Without that, the only mountains would be volcanoes and impact craters.
Volcanoes wouldn't have sedimentary layers, and impact craters would be unlikely to have horizontal ones, like in the Mars pictures.
So those pictures of layers of sedimentary rocks going up the side of a mountain seem to be a sign of plate tectonics, but there's no sign of it now.
Or is there some other way that land can rise up? Maybe a giant bulge from within, in some way?

[JimC]

Early plate tectonics, now dead, that pushed up sedimentary deposits made earlier still in the wet youth of Mars...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Early plate tectonics, now dead, that pushed up sedimentary deposits made earlier still in the wet youth of Mars...

I don't see what the confusion is here.

[mistermack]

Early plate tectonics, now dead, that pushed up sedimentary deposits made earlier still in the wet youth of Mars...

I don't see what the confusion is here.

I thought someone might actually KNOW the answer. Or suggest another way that land could have risen. Or know a link for where it was studied.

Wikipedia doesn't have much on it. The thing is with a planet that doesn't have plate tectonics, you might get bulging up of the surface because of a plume hot spot.
On Earth, the moving plates mean that the surface slides across a hot plume in the mantle, so you can get a string of volcanoes, not too big. But if the surface isn't moving, you might get a huge bulge I guess.

So you would imagine that they could tell if there had been plate tectonics in the past, by the patterns of volcanoes.

[cronus]

It had the top knocked off sometime....that might have got things moving for a while?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Early plate tectonics, now dead, that pushed up sedimentary deposits made earlier still in the wet youth of Mars...

I don't see what the confusion is here.

I thought someone might actually KNOW the answer. Or suggest another way that land could have risen. Or know a link for where it was studied.

Wikipedia doesn't have much on it. The thing is with a planet that doesn't have plate tectonics, you might get bulging up of the surface because of a plume hot spot.
On Earth, the moving plates mean that the surface slides across a hot plume in the mantle, so you can get a string of volcanoes, not too big. But if the surface isn't moving, you might get a huge bulge I guess.

So you would imagine that they could tell if there had been plate tectonics in the past, by the patterns of volcanoes.

It doesn't have plate tectonics NOW.

[Rum]

I read somewhere it never did have plate tectonics. Sadly I can't remember where.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I read somewhere it never did have plate tectonics. Sadly I can't remember where.

Even then would that rule out upthrusting?

[mistermack]

I read somewhere it never did have plate tectonics. Sadly I can't remember where.

I thought I'd read that too, but I can't remember either. That's why I asked the question, really.

Wiki ain't much help, but there is a suggestion of a theory for a two-plate arrangement a long time ago. Nothing definitive though.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I read somewhere it never did have plate tectonics. Sadly I can't remember where.

I thought I'd read that too, but I can't remember either. That's why I asked the question, really.

Wiki ain't much help, but there is a suggestion of a theory for a two-plate arrangement a long time ago. Nothing definitive though.

Have you check in at http://www.bautforum.com/

[mistermack]

Have you check in at http://www.bautforum.com/

No. Looks worth a look though.
That's an odd link. You end up somewhere called cosmoquest, not bautforum dot com.
Maybe an automatic re-direct I guess.

[Rum]

Just did a search and it seems that the general opinion is that there were (and maybe still are) plate tectonics. Here's one link but there are a number..

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/uc ... 37303.aspx