A recent study revealed that Mars might once have made a gorgeous coastal destination.Okay, so, obviously, the large red plant isn’t accessible as your dream vacation—especially since it’s not currently habitable for humans. However, this new research suggests that the celestial body once featured “vacation-style” beaches with a possible ocean.“We’re finding places on Mars that used to look like ancient beaches and ancient river deltas,” said Benjamin Cardenas, assistant professor of geology at Penn State and co-author on the study. “We found evidence for wind, waves, no shortage of sand—a proper, vacation-style beach.”The researchers studied Mars’s underground sedimentary deposits and identified formations called “foreshore deposits,” similar to Earth’s beaches.“This stood out to us immediately because it suggests there were waves, which means there was a dynamic interface of air and water,” Cardenas explained. “When we look back at where the earliest life on Earth developed, it was in the interaction between oceans and land, so this is painting a picture of ancient habitable environments, capable of harboring conditions friendly toward microbial life.”Mars Rover Found Evidence of an Ocean With ‘Vacation-Style’ BeachesAccording to the study, the planet’s extensive dipping deposits most likely had a coastal origin—just as they do on Earth.“This finding implies the past existence of a large water body, supporting the hypothesis of a past ocean in the northern plains of Mars,” the study abstract reads.“We’re seeing that the shoreline of this body of water evolved over time,” Cardenas added.“We tend to think about Mars as just a static snapshot of a planet, but it was evolving. Rivers were flowing, sediment was moving, and land was being built and eroded,” he continued. “This type of sedimentary geology can tell us what the landscape looked like, how they evolved, and, importantly, help us identify where we would want to look for past life.”The post Mars Rover Found Evidence of an Ocean With ‘Vacation-Style’ Beaches appeared first on VICE.