The Oceans of Mars

This is the coolest thing EVER!

NASA have just announced that Mars once had a vast ocean covering a large part of the northern hemisphere. In fact, oceans may once have covered 20% of Mars, up to a mile deep, meaning that abundant water would have been around for plenty of time for life to have evolved (certainly longer than it took for life to evolve on Earth). Here’s the video explaining it:

For me, this is utterly, totally cool, because, of course, my book Secrets of the Dragon Tomb is set on a Mars where there are oceans, animals, and of course all sorts of alien weirdness. In fact, the map I made (adapted from Google Mars) has oceans in similar places. Here’s my map:

My map doesn’t show most of the ocean areas, because that’s not where the story takes place, but there’s some it showing.

I love it when things like this turn up and make me all excited for my novel. Now I really can imagine that there were pterodactyls flying through the sky, strange clockwork machines, and ancient dragon tombs. Because if I was right about the oceans… :D