Oudemans Layers

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2005/10/27/

WOOOW!

How SO THICK a layered pattern could be so much TILTED and folded? This implies tectonic movements. Perhaps this is a remnant of a very ancient time where there was still plate tectonic on Mars, and we see a piece of a continent (there are some evidences of former plate tectonics on Mars, but it lasted not long enough to form continents).

Or more likely it shows one of these regions in the south west of Tharsis dome where there are large folds. But where the layers come from? At what epoch they formed? Tharsis lava flows, or much more ancient?

Note that these folds at South West of Tharsis are "recent" as they are a consequence of the Tharsis dome formation

Perhaps a priority target for a future rover...

I'd vote for that, what an amazing site!

More ripples in Oudemans Crater (southern area of central peak) :

http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/MOLA/gridded/...regions/49/089/

If the folded layers are into a crater, that means very likely that they are pieces of terrain projected upside down during the explosion, and falling back on the crater floor, as this is observed in the 30kms Ries crater in Germany (no need of a rocket to visit it!). So the folding event has much less interest than, for instance, an early plate tectonics. But the layered terrain itself remains very intriguing. When did it formed? Lava plateau? Former ocean? I rather think that such many layers were formed in water (climate changes explaining the number of strata) than with volcanic activity (althougn the later may also produce finely layered terrains, for instance with a series of explosions.)

These outcrops were once in the ground beneath the present floor of Oudemans Crater. The impact which produced the crater brought these rocks to the surface and later ... Erosion / Sedimentary