Why and when did the volcanoes become extenct on Mars?
Max Answer: Max, The only way for us to know how old the volcanoes are on Mars by counting how many impact craters have formed on the volcano. The more craters, the older the volcano. However, we have to make educated guesses about how many meteorites hit the planet in a given time period. We understand the relative ages of features on Mars very well (what stuff is the oldest, which is the youngest), but it is very hard to assign dates to them. Olympus Mons and the Tharsis region volcanoes are the youngest on Mars. Estimates of their last eruptions range from 100 Million years ago (the end of the Mesozoic era when there were dinosaurs on Earth) or up to 2.7 Billion years ago (before there was any life on Earth, almost half the age of the Earth ago). Mars is a fairly small planet, about 1/3 the diameter of the Earth. Because it is smaller it had less internal heat and also loses heat much more rapidly than the Earth. We think that Mars has lost most of its internal heat and can no longe
