Mars

Sculpting Of Martian Brain Terrain Reveals The Drying Of Ancient Mars

By Keith Cowing

Status Report

astro-ph.EP

February 5, 2026

Filed under astro-ph.EP, cartography, climate, geology, habitability, hydrology, Mapping, Mars, Martian brain terrain

Sculpting Of Martian Brain Terrain Reveals The Drying Of Ancient Mars — Quantitative morphological metric extraction results and numerical simulation results. A. Spatial distribution of DAF across the study area, overlaid on a shaded relief base map derived from DTEEC_033165_2195_032875_2195_A01 (26). Colors represent specific DAF values indicated by the color bar on the bottom right. The MBT boundary is shown as a black dashed line. B. Schematic diagram defining the key morphological feature of MBT. The curve represents the terrain tangent of MBT. The yellow shaded areas indicate depression. The dashed line represents the depression threshold elevation (DTE) (see SI Appendix). C-E. HiRISE images of three local MBT in the study area. All three images share the same scale-bar. F-H. Detrended observed elevation data for three MBT areas shown in C-E, respectively (SI Appendix, Fig. S3). The white contour lines, which correspond to DTE values, outline the depression areas. Colors indicate elevation value using a color bar shown to the right of H. The I-K. Simulation results with increasing maximum stone movement rate (𝑣_max): 3.25 mm/cycle (I), 3.40 mm/cycle (J) and 3.90 mm/cycle(K).Colors represent the simulated elevation using a common color bar shown to the right of K. — astro-ph.EP

The Martian brain terrain (MBT), characterized by its unique brain-like morphology, is a potential geological archive for finding hints of paleoclimatic conditions during its formation period.

The morphological similarity of MBT to self-organized patterned ground on Earth suggests a shared formation mechanism. However, the lack of quantitative descriptions and robust physical modeling of self-organized stone transport jointly limits the study of the thermal and aqueous conditions governing MBT’s formation.

Here we established a specialized quantitative system for extracting the morphological features of MBT, taking a typical region located in the northern Arabia Terra as an example, and then employed a numerical model to investigate its formation mechanisms. Our simulation results accurately replicate the observed morphology of MBT, matching its key geometric metrics with deviations <10%.

Crucially, however, we find that the self-organized transport can solely produce relief <0.5 m, insufficient to explain the formation of MBT with average relief of 3.29±0.65 m. We attribute this discrepancy to sculpting driven by late-stage sublimation, constraining cumulative subsurface ice loss in this region to ∼3 meters over the past ∼3 Ma.

These findings demonstrate that MBT’s formation is a multi-stage process: initial patterning driven by freeze-thaw cycles (implying liquid water) followed by vertical sculpting via sublimation (requiring a dry environment). This evolution provides physical evidence for the transition of the ancient Martian climate from a wetter period to a colder hyper-arid state.

Shenyi Zhang, Lei Zhang, Yutian Ke, Jinhai Zhang

Subjects: Geophysics (physics.geo-ph); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Computational Physics (physics.comp-ph)
Cite as: arXiv:2601.22606 [physics.geo-ph] (or arXiv:2601.22606v1 [physics.geo-ph] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2601.22606
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Submission history
From: Lei Zhang Dr.
[v1] Fri, 30 Jan 2026 06:01:02 UTC (10,938 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.22606

Astrobiology,

Keith Cowing

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻

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