Crater Count Ages of Young Martian Ray Craters: a Successful Test of the Crater Chronometry System

Details Crater Count Ages of Young Martian Ray Craters: a Successful Test of the Crater Chronometry System Crater Count Ages of Young Martian Ray Craters: a Successful Test of the Crater Chronometry System

Sep 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008dps....40.0301h&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #40, #3.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 40, p.389

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McEwen et al. (2005) developed a useful test of crater-count chronometry systems [1]. They argued that fresh-looking, Zunil-style Martian ray craters are the youngest or near-youngest craters in their size ranges. The "McEwen et al. test" is that crater-count ages from small craters (D 10-25 m), superimposed on these "Zunils," should be comparable to the expected formation intervals of these host Zunil-style primaries themselves, typically 1 to a few My. McEwen et al., however, found few or no small superposed craters in MOC frames, and concluded that crater chronometry systems are in error by factors of 700 to 2000.
Since then, Malin et al. discovered that 10-25m craters form at essentially the rate we used in our isochron system [2,3,4]. Thus, 10-25m craters should be usable for dating these "Zunils." We re-evaluate the "McEwen et al. test" with HiRise images, studying three young craters they discussed, and five others. In every case we found small-crater populations, giving approximately the expected ages. We conclude that the alleged large errors are incorrect. The semi-independent crater count systems of Neukum and of Hartmann agree with the Malin cratering rate, are internally consistent, and appear to give valid age information within about a factor 2 to 4.
We thank the International Space Science Institute (ISSI), Bern, for hosting our working group.
[1] McEwen et al. 2005 Icarus,176, 351-381.
[2] Malin, M. et al. 2006 Science 314, 1573-1557.
[3] Hartmann, W.K. 2007 Icarus, 189, 274-278.
[4] Kreslavsky, M.A. 2007 7th Internatl. Conf. on Mars, Abstract 3325.

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