Greg Orme reports that the Meridian Face has some similar features to the Cydonia and Crowned Faces such as having a crown. It is similar to the Nefertiti formation in that it seems to be made of dark soil, dunes in this case. Some dark dune fields can migrate large distances in Meridiani Planum, others remain confined in larger craters perhaps by shielding them from the wind. This can allow for the formation to be very old and remain intact. The similarity between the Crowned Face in the King’s Valley Libya Montes and the Meridiani Face was originally shown with an overall. The implicit hypothesis was that a new overlay would match the two faces even more closely, this has been borne out with the Crowned Face HiRise image and the Meridiani Face CTX image.
The Meridiani Face was discovered around early June 2007 by a Mars researcher Terry James. The null hypothesis is that this is a random dune formation, an example of people’s innate ability to see faces. It is proposed that this is falsified by the shape of these dunes, to be artificial they would have had to be moved to their current positions. By comparing them to naturally formed dunes the discrepancies between the two processes are shown. Dune fields in Meridiani Planum craters are probably formed from layers of volcanic ash, these are usually constrained within the crater rim.
One hypothesis is there is an unknown process stopping these dunes migrating, saltation occurs as the dunes change shape but do not move significant distances. Another hypothesis is the crater rim shields them from enough wind to migrate them significant distances. Cardinale et al. suggest the topography can account for the variations in the dune shapes such as in the Meridiani Face. Other possible artifacts on Mars, such as the Crowned Face in Libya Montes probably date to when Mars had a paleosea and thicker atmosphere. To have a common origin the Meridiani Face should have an equivalent age of several billion years.
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