Almost all of us are in the know when it comes to the possibility of Mars having had streams and rivers a long while back in its history. Sure, it's a very good thing to be as interested in this as the scientists and researchers involved in Mars explorations are, but maybe we should also be looking at the general picture.

Sediments found in craters just east of the Meridiani Planum give us more knowledge of the Red Planet's history. The craters (and everything inside them) confirm Mars' history of formation by impact, burial and exhumation by erosion, and the filling of sediments.

An unnamed crater 27 miles wide found near the large Schiaparelli crater shows many features proving it to be one of the oldest craters formed in Mars. It was supposedly formed during the Noachian period. With the help of the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) on the Mars Odyssey orbiter, a false color image was formed to help determine what the crater could tell scientists about the planet.

Found inside the crater are dustier and sandier areas, and places with rock and hardened sediments at the surface. These prove that after the crater was formed, sediments filled the entire crater before erosion set in and brought it to its present state. The sediments stand about 3,300 ft higher than the crater's floor.

Analyzing the crater more using the false color image, one can see ridges divide and curve on the sediment stack. And yes, this might mean water flowed through what looks like former channels. Or these could just be the work of erosion on ledges in thin sedimentary layers.

Yardangs 800 to 900 feet apart were also found on the surface. These are cone-shaped hills formed by the wind. Some may think these may be volcanoes but they aren't as yardangs occur only in relatively soft materials.

Just around the edge of the sedimentary stack are dust-rich materials that show signs of depressions and small channels where - you guessed right - water might have flowed. (And we're back again to the topic "Was there water on Mars?".)

One good way to determine this is to compare the Red Planet to our own. If during climatic shifts the Earth's polar regions can warm enough to let lose water to the tropics, then maybe that could have happened to Mars too. Climate cycles in that planet could have left deposits of ice-rich and dusty material; and the depressions are actually scars of when the ground subsided after water or ice escaped.