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The Wilhelm quadrangle lies along a mare highlands boundary west of the crater Tycho, southeast of Mare Humorum, and southwest of Mare Numbium. The outer scarp of the Orientale basin is 1200 km to the West-Northwest. The quadrangle is characterized by pitted and mantled appearing terra, which in the north is interrupted by patches of mare and in the south by several large pre-Imbrian craters. Most of the mare material occupies angular massif bounded depressions which are approximately concentric and radial to the basins that contain Mare Humorum and Mare Numbium. Most of the large craters are either partly subdued (Wurzelbauer, Montanari), the degree of subdual apparently resulting from a mantle of terra material...
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The Oxia Palus quadrangle contains three distinct geologic provinces: (1) an elevated cratered plateau that occupies three-fourths of the quadrangle and is similar to much of the southern hemisphere of Mars; (2) the low, relatively featureless Chryse Planitia in the northwest corner; and (3) a complex province of chaotic terrain and immense channels or valleys that divides the plateau an determinates at Chryse Planitia. Generally, the oldest geologic units occur in the plateau province and the youngest in Chryse Planitia. Discovery by Mariner 9 of the channels, the four largest of which are given neames meaning “Mars” in Akkadian, Sumerian, Anglo-Saxon, and Greek (west to east), renews the possibility of water and...
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The map area contains two mare provinces, one terra province, and one province of mixed mare and terra. The maria are the semicircular southern half of Mare Crisium and the northeast sector of Mare Fedunditatis. The massive belt of terra that arcs across the quadrangle between these maria is the south rim of the Crisium multi-ringed basin; its southwest part is probably superposed on an older, originally similar, accurate rim of the Fecunditatis basin. The fourth province, in the southeast corner, includes small irregular maria such as Mare Undarum and Mare Spumans and intervening peninsulas and islands of terra.
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