The northern and southern hemispheres of Mars are topographically distinct. Crustal thickness analyses and numerical simulations suggest a giant impact just after the crust differentiated 4.4 billion years ago as a plausible cause for this dichotomy.
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Melosh, H. Did an impact blast away half of the martian crust?. Nature Geosci 1, 412–414 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo237
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo237
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