besides. Of course, when I say recently I mean sometime in the last few thousand to few hundred
thousand to few million years, which, in astronomical terms, is really just the other day.
Fig.88The Dragon Whip’s its Tail
A most interesting and very unusual feature that is quite unique to Mars is that the top section
of the planet is divided from the bottom section by an enormous jagged and uneven cliff that
stretches around the entire planet. There are no breaks in this cliff; it goes all the way around!
The top section of the globe is sparsely cratered lowlands and the bottom is heavily cratered
highlands. This provides us with an instant clue. These highland and lowland sections of the
planet are large enough to be described as each taking up an entire hemisphere of the planets
surface but are not at all defined by the hemispheres of the globe with the unbroken cliff that
separates the two, running around the planet at roughly 35 degrees to its axis. Get the picture?
It’s kind of like looking at an orange with the top half of the peel roughly torn off while the
skin still remains covering the bottom half. This of course gives us every indication that a
reasonably large chunk of the planets crust is somehow missing from the top half of the planet.
This distinguishing separating feature on the Martian surface is known by scientists as the
‘Line of Dichotomy’ (fig.89).
Fig.89