Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on May 14, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the science team labels as “light-toned layered deposits.”

Their focus, rightly from a geologist’s perspective, is the contrast in color between different layers, suggesting different composition and thus a different formation history for each layer.

To me, what made this feature appealing is the thinness and number of its layers. It reminded me of fillo pastry, “unleavened flour dough formed into very thin sheets or leaves.”

If you look at the full image you will see that cropped section only covers one edge of a tongue-shaped plateau, with similar layers revealed along its entire cliff wall. It is almost like those layers have been peeling off for eons to leave the plateau behind.

The location below gives some context.

The image, marked by the white cross, is in what is called Ladon Basin, an outlet drainage valley [pdf] that poured northward into the resurgences that came out of Valles Marineris. Here scientists have found many features suggesting strong flows which they assume at present to have been catastrophic floods, though this remains unproven.

In the above image, the downhill grade is to the north. You can also see that grade in the small eroding drainage hollow in the image itself. If a catastrophic flood poured over this at some time in the past, it eroded material away to the north.