Opportunity's Landing Site Once Underwater?

[iceman]

Brian Hynek, an associate researcher from the University of Colorado at Boulder thinks he's found evidence for a vast ocean or lake that once covered the region around NASA's Opportunity rover landing site. The data comes from the Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey spacecraft, which have extensively mapped the area. He estimates that the ocean must have been 330,000 square km (127,000 square miles), which is more than all the Great Lakes combined. Hynek used several pieces of evidence to make this prediction, including gray hematite scattered around the whole region, and outcrops of sedimentary rock.