Where the ground collapsed and unleashed Mars' catastrophic floods.
Xanthe Terra is an old cratered highland famous for its chaotic terrain — jumbled blocks of collapsed ground — and for the outflow channels that erupted from it. These features record the sudden release of enormous volumes of underground water.
Claim your plot here →Across Xanthe Terra the crust has collapsed into chaos terrain: chaotic fields of tilted, fractured mesas separated by hollows. Geologists think huge stores of groundwater or ice were suddenly released here, undermining the surface so it caved in and sending water rushing away in vast outflow channels toward the northern plains of Chryse.
Those floods rank among the largest ever known, moving in days what Earth's rivers carry in years. The highland itself is heavily cratered and ancient, a piece of Mars' original crust broken open by later water activity. Xanthe is a place where solid ground literally dissolved into flood.