Scientists from Brown University think that Mars' climate system isn't as dormant as popular science would have you believe.

They've managed to analyze high-resolution photos from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and have observed that glaciers at least one kilometer (0.6 miles) thick may have been situated in the red planet's mid-latitude belt some 100 million years ago.

The ice packs are at the poles now, so obviously within a time frame of say, now to 100 million years ago, the packs traveled from the belt to the poles.

On Earth, glacier movement is a result of climate change, though often they are also theorized to be precursors of climate change itself. Hanging on to the same idea, the glacial movement on Mars could also spur yet another climate change for the planet.

The results also draw up questions revolving around Mars' capability of supporting life, if it didn't support life already some 3.5 billion years in the past. In that same era, scientists believe Mars was flowing with water. Jay Dickson, a research analyst in the Department of Geological Sciences at Brown and lead author of the Geology piece, said:

We've gone from seeing Mars as a dead planet for three-plus billion years to one that has been alive in recent times. [The finding] has changed our perspective from a planet that has been dry and dead to one that is icy and active.

Active for multiple Ice Ages, in fact, as the research group could tell from the photographs. If glaciers were really on the mid-latitudinal areas, their movement to the polar zones would have affected the amount of sunlight being absorbed on large land masses on Mars.

With that in mind, they've spotted an area along the mid-latitude zone of Mars, called the Protonilus Mensae-Coloe Fossae, which depicts a particular canyon where a body of ice may have been. Moraines (rock deposits highlighting the boundaries of a glacial movement path) were spotted cluing them in to possible ice movement.

Additionally, they've spotted a lobe that appears superimposed on a past ice deposit, which indicates that there may have been recent glaciation (formation of glacier). While the time has yet to be determined, further observation shows that there could have been at least two periods of glaciation. That counts as two Ice Ages.

Now the question whether those little green men are going to experience untimely global warming is still up in the air.