Abstrait

The ferns: Artefacts or natural formations?

Greg M.Orme

The ferns are a series of plant like formations discovered by the author on the 28th November 2014. The name was actually given by the HiRise team, it refers to a series of dark structures in Antonialdi Crater that resemble plants. The natural hypothesis is a channel network, that a series of rivers and their sediments were more resistant to erosion than the surrounding terrain. Over time the ground around these channels eroded away leaving the fern shapes above ground. The alternate hypothesis is they are artificially constructed, this paper attempts to show geological explanations do not work with these formations.