page_title: Hesperian
section_title: Hesperian chronology and stratigraphy
hierarchical_section_title: Hesperian / Hesperian chronology and stratigraphy
caption_attribution_description: English: Lava flow and crater ejecta, as seen by hirise. Location is 6.5 North and 140.3 East. Scale bar is 500 meters long. Image was taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE. The HiRISE camera was built by Ball Aerospace and Technology Corporation and is operated by the University of Arizona. Image courtesy NASA/JPL/University of Arizona.
context_page_description: The Hesperian is a geologic system and time period on the planet Mars characterized by widespread volcanic activity and catastrophic flooding that carved immense outflow channels across the surface. The Hesperian is an intermediate and transitional period of Martian history. During the Hesperian, Mars changed from the wetter and perhaps warmer world of the Noachian to the dry, cold, and dusty planet seen today. The absolute age of the Hesperian Period is uncertain. The beginning of the period followed the end of the late heavy bombardment and probably corresponds to the start of the lunar Late Imbrian period, around 3700 million years ago. The end of the Hesperian Period is much more uncertain and could range anywhere from 3200 to 2000 Mya, with 3000 Mya being frequently cited. The Hesperian Period is roughly coincident with the Earth's early Archean Eon.
  With the decline of heavy impacts at the end of the Noachian, volcanism became the primary geologic process on Mars, producing vast plains of flood basalts and broad volcanic constructs. By Hesperian times, all of the large shield volcanoes on Mars, including Olympus Mons, had begun to form.
context_section_description: Martian time periods are based on geologic mapping of surface units from spacecraft images. A surface unit is a terrain with a distinct texture, color, albedo, spectral property, or set of landforms that distinguish it from other surface units and is large enough to be shown on a map. Mappers use a stratigraphic approach pioneered in the early 1960s for photogeologic studies of the Moon. Although based on surface characteristics, a surface unit is not the surface itself or group of landforms. It is an inferred geologic unit (e.g., formation) representing a sheetlike, wedgelike, or tabular body of rock that underlies the surface. A surface unit may be a crater ejecta deposit, lava flow, or any surface that can be represented in three dimensions as a discrete stratum bound above or below by adjacent units (illustrated right). Using principles such as superpositioning (illustrated left), cross-cutting relationships, and the relationship of impact crater density to age, geologists can place the units into a relative age sequence from oldest to youngest. Units of similar age are grouped globally into larger, time-stratigraphic (chronostratigraphic) units, called systems. For Mars, three systems are defined: the Noachian, Hesperian, and Amazonian. Geologic units lying below (older than) the Noachian are informally designated Pre-Noachian. The geologic time (geochronologic) equivalent of the Hesperian System is the Hesperian Period. Rock or surface units of the Hesperian System were formed or deposited during the Hesperian Period.
caption: HiRISE image illustrating superpositioning, a principle that lets geologists determine the relative ages of surface units. The dark-toned lava flow overlies (is younger than) the light-toned, more heavily cratered terrain at right. The ejecta of the crater at center overlies both units, indicating that the crater is the youngest feature in the image. (See cross section, above right.)
exif: {}