The water that formed the sea appears to have originated beneath the surface of Mars, and to have come out through a series of fractures known as the Cerberus Fossae, from where it flowed in a catastrophic flood.
Ice is unstable at the surface of Mars because of the low atmospheric pressure, and sublimates away (changes straight from ice to vapour without passing through the liquid state) into the atmosphere, but some of the ice rafts appear to have been protected by layers of volcanic dust. While the entire sea froze solid, the unprotected ice between the rafts sublimated to leave ‘ice plateaus’ surrounded by bare rock.
The sparse cratering of this region shows that it cannot have formed more than about five million years ago, meaning this is a relatively young feature.
Submitted by: GHoosdum
Source: European Space Agency
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