June 13
The once-flat shorelines were disfigured by a massive toppling over of the planet, scientists announced today. The warping of the Martian rock has hidden clear evidence of the oceans, which in any case have been gone for at least 2 billion years.

Two major shorelines exist on Mars, each thousands of miles long — one remaining from the older Arabia Ocean, and another from the younger Deuteronilus Ocean, said planetarium scientist Taylor Perron."The Arabia would have contained two to three times the volume of water than in the ice that covers Antarctica," he said.

Somewhere along the way to toppling over 50 degrees to the north, Mars probably lost some of its water, leaving the Deuteronilus Ocean's shoreline exposed. The volume of water was too large to simply evaporate into space, so we think there is still some subterranean reservoirs on Mars.

As a planet spins, the heaviest things tend to shift towards the equator, where they are most stable. Earth, too, has a bulge at its equator. The volcanic Tharsis region of Mars, a vast raised area along Mars' equator, is evidence for how this works.

More than a billion years ago, something happened in the way mass was distributed on Mars to cause the imbalanced portion to shift toward the equator-and allow the vast shores of the Martian oceans to warp.

Near the equator, the surface of a planet stays in a relatively flattened bulge under the pressure of centripetal forces. But outside of the equator, the rock behaves elastically and often bunches up, like the surface of a deflating balloon. The oceanic shorelines were once near the equator, but warped into hilly up-and-down elevations of rock as they move towards the north with the tilting planet.
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Good post. I think the reason Mars' rotational axis is unstable is because it does not have the stabilizing effect our large moon has on the Earth.

i already read about it somewhere.but that oceans dried out.now there is little amount of water over there.

possibly no water at all.

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/spotlight/20070612.html

Get a load of this!!! Earth temps on Mars...Now, maybe the water will be found if it is still frozen....