Here’s a recipe for hiding a massive volcano on Mars. Take one giant volcano. Tuck in into a dramatic, fractured landscape. Add a long history of extreme erosion. Give it time to meld with the surrounding terrain. That’s what scientists think happened to a suspected Martian volcano that is just now coming to light.
Background image: NASA/USGS Mars globe. Geologic interpretation and annotations by Pascal Lee and Sourabh Shubham 2024 Some of the clues appeared in imagery and data captured by orbiting spacecraft, including NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. What’s missing is a classic volcano cone. A topographic map points out the inner and outer zones of the volcano and a circular depression the scientists are interpreting as a caldera remnant. A caldera is a hollow left behind after a volcanic eruption. These also form on Earth. Yellowstone National Park, for example, encompasses a massive caldera.