Abstract
While an early wet Mars is well established along many lines of
scientific evidence, it remains vigorously debated in what forms water
existed in the early Mars and how Mars transitioned from a wet planet
into a dry planet. Here, we construct a detailed seismic stratigraphy
from the source region of a marsquake in Cerberus Fossae to the InSight
(Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat
Transport) landing site to decipher the evolution of Mars. Seismic
velocity structures are constrained with combined seismic constraints of
waveforms recorded for the marsquake and receiver functions extracted
from the seismic data of three marsquakes, while the crustal composition
and pore property are inferred based on rock physics modeling of the
inferred seismic structure and constraints of porosity-depth profiles
beneath Mars. Seismic stratigraphy reveals a liquid-water saturated
smectite-chlorite-enriched sedimentary layer at 2.65-3.85 km beneath
Martian surface and a transition from the dry surface basaltic layer to
liquid-water saturated overlain crustal layers, suggesting that early
wet Mars experienced a paleo-ocean and a resurface event in the northern
plain before transitioning into a dry planet and covered by the
emplacement of the Elysium volcanic unit in Hesperian and Amazonian. Our
results indicate that the major early records of planetary water history
are buried deep in the Martian crust, and so is the possible evidence of
early life on Mars. Magmatic perturbations of the deep water reservoir
would also provide an explanation for possible subsequent oceans
proposed at different stages of the Martian history.