Arabia Terra
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Arabia Terra is a large upland region in the north of Mars. It is densely cratered and heavily eroded. This battered topography indicates great age, and Arabia Terra is presumed to be one of the oldest terrains on the planet. It covers as much 4500 kilometers at its longest extent, centered roughly at 25°N and 5°E, with its eastern and southern regions rising 4 kilometers above the north-west. Alongside its many craters, canyons wind through the Arabia Terra, many emptying into the large Northern lowlands of the planet, which the terra abuts to the north.
Arabia Terra was named in 1979 after a corresponding albedo feature on a map by Giovanni Schiaparelli, who named it in turn after the Arabian peninsula.
Research on the region was undertaken in 1997 and the individuality of the province better defined.[1] An equatorial belt was noted with a crater age distinctly younger than the northern part of the province and of Noachis Terra to the south. This was interpreted as an "incipient back-arc system" provoked by the subduction of Mars lowlands under Arabia Terra during Noachian times. Regional fracture patterns were also explained in this manner, and the rotational instability of the planet as a cause was not supported.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Anguita, Francisco; Anguita, Jorge; Castilla, Gabriel; de La Casa, Miguel-Angel; Domínguez, José-María; Herrera, Raquel; Llanes, Pilar; López, Mónica; Martínez, Vicente (1997). "Arabia Terra, Mars: Tectonic and Palaeoclimatic Evolution of a Remarkable Sector of Martian Lithosphere". Physics and Astronomy 77 (1): 55. doi:.
