Talking
Points Memo: An Yin, a geologist from the University of
California, Los Angeles, has proposed that Mars exhibits areas
of localized plate-tectonic activity. His conclusions are based
on new images from the
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Earth is the only planet
known to have plate tectonicsâmdash;the
shifting and collision of large segments of the planet's crust.
An earlier theory that Mars experienced plate tectonics was
abandoned because, rather than being formed over an extended
period of time like Earth's plate tectonics are, the Martian
landscape features had been formed at about the same
time.
