By now, Mars explorers have already collected enough data to approximately reconstruct the archaeological history of the red planet.
The first known era in the history of Mars - the Prenois (4.5 billion years ago) - lasted for the first half a billion years after the final formation of Mars and left behind philosilicates - sheet silicates, an example of which on Earth is, in particular, mica.
Mars at the turn of the Prenoe and Noysk eras.
For the formation of some of the discovered phylosilicates, acidic conditions were required, for the formation of others - alkaline, but most importantly, these minerals are formed during the interaction of mantle rocks with water. On Earth, this time corresponds to katarchean.
The period of active tectonic activity on our planet lasted much longer (and continues to this day), so the Catarchean sedimentary rocks did not survive, as they melted down in further cataclysms.
Gusev Crater, Noisky era.
Now it is believed that then there was no "hellish heat" on Earth, but there were landscapes of an inhospitable harsh desert with a weakly warming Sun (its luminosity was 25-30% lower than the modern one), and the lunar disk was many times larger.
The relief of both planets resembled a lunar landscape and was composed only of monotonously dark gray primary matter, but on Earth it was smoothed more intensively due to strong and almost continuous tidal earthquakes (then the Moon was at a distance of only 17 thousand km from the Earth, now - 384.5 thousand).
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According to the latest data, even then there were seas on the Earth: the hydrosphere began to form in the first 100 million years of the planet's existence as a solid, which is not surprising, since a large amount of water was contained in protoplanetary matter. Sometimes they forget about this and write that the oceans were formed only by comets falling to the Earth, but where did the water come from in comets?
Sea of Hesperia, Hesperian era.
On Mars, the Prenoe era 4 billion years ago gradually spilled over into the Noy era. This period of time in the history of ancient Mars is characterized by global volcanic activity. It was then that the first Tarsis volcanoes began to form. A huge variety of chemical compounds - ingredients for the kitchen of life - were thrown onto the planet's surface and into the atmosphere.
In terms of volcanism, the Earth did not lag behind - the Noi era corresponds to the terrestrial Eoarchean, but the main thing is that the most ancient terrestrial stromatolites - fossil products of the activity of cyanobacterial communities - belong to the end of this time.
Given the proximity of Earth and Mars, it does not matter at all whether the emergence of life is an accident or a pattern - both planets with a high probability exchanged biological material during asteroid strikes.
3.5 billion years ago, the Hesperian era began on Mars, when Mars had a permanent hydrosphere. The northern plain of the red planet was then occupied by a salt ocean with a volume of up to 15-17 million km³ and a depth of 0.7-1 km (for comparison, the Earth's Arctic Ocean has a volume of 18.07 million km³).
At times, this ocean split in two. One ocean, rounded, filled a basin of impact origin in the Utopia region, the other, irregularly shaped, - the North Pole region of Mars. There were many lakes and rivers in temperate and low latitudes, and glaciers on the South Plateau.
Mars had a very dense atmosphere, similar to that of the Earth at that time, with surface temperatures reaching 50 ° C and pressures in excess of 1 atmosphere. Three meteorites of Martian origin - ALH 84001, Nuckla and Shergotti, in which formations similar to fossilized remains of microorganisms were found, were thrown from the surface of Mars just in the Hesperian era.
Earth and Mars in the Hesperian era in scale.
2.5 billion years ago, the Proterozoic began on Earth and terrestrial photosynthetic organisms arranged an oxygen catastrophe for anaerobes. As a result of photosynthesis, plants assimilated carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and release oxygen. Owing to the saturation of air and water with oxygen, aerobic organisms appeared.
And on Mars, the Amazonian era began. The climate began to change catastrophically. The most powerful, but gradually dying out global tectonic and volcanic processes took place, during which the largest Martian volcanoes in the solar system, in particular, Olympus, were formed.
Volcano Olympus.
The characteristics of the hydrosphere itself and the atmosphere changed several times, the Northern Ocean appeared and disappeared. Catastrophic floods associated with the melting of the cryosphere led to the formation of huge canyons: a stream deeper than the Amazon flowed into the Ares valley from the southern highlands of Mars, the water flow in the Kassey valley exceeded 1 billion m³ / s. But over time, the water began to disappear - partly evaporate, partly freeze.
Evaporating salt lake in Gusev Crater, beginning of the Amazonian era.
The reason for this is the small mass of the planet: the energy for tectonic activity had dried up by that time, its last manifestation, most likely, was the Mariner Valley.
Nevertheless, volcanic activity continued for some time due to the radioactive heating of the bowels. That is why Martian volcanoes are so high: there was no plate movement and eruptions were repeated many times in the same place.
The magnetic field disappeared and the atmosphere, already poorly held by weak gravity and not replenished by eruptions, began to dissipate. And as the atmosphere disappeared, the greenhouse effect decreased.
Gusev crater during the period of loss of atmosphere.
About a billion years ago, sexual reproduction appeared on Earth, and active processes in the lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere ended on Mars, and it took on its present shape.