Perseverance: A powerful ancient river system on Mars is revealed

Curving layers may indicate flowing water, and such features can be found on Earth, but they are mostly hidden by vegetation. In this case, it suggests a deeper and fast-moving river that once flowed through this surface. 

The clues of coarse sediment grains and cobbles point to it as well. “Those indicate a high-energy river that’s truckin’ and carrying a lot of debris. The more powerful the flow of water, the more easily it’s able to move larger pieces of material,” said Libby Ives, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which operates the Perseverance rover, in an official release.

According to NASA, it was most likely part of a network of waterways that led into Jezero Crater. This crater has been this Mars resident's primary exploratory destination. 

The scientists pieced together hundreds of images captured by the Mastcam-Z instrument onboard Perseverance to create this image.

The mosaic also indicates that the layers were most likely much taller in the past than what is seen today. The rock piles were carved down to the size seen in the images after being sandblasted by the wind. 

“The wind has acted like a scalpel that has cut the tops off these deposits. We do see deposits like this on Earth, but they’re never as well exposed as they are here on Mars. Earth is covered in vegetation that hides these layers,” said Michael Lamb of Caltech, a river specialist and Perseverance science team collaborator, in the press release.

Going forward, the team will peer beneath this area with a penetrating radar instrument called RIMFAX (short for Radar Imager for Mars' Subsurface Experiment) to find more clues on the ancient river.