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Abstract
Faults have long been recognized on the rocky planets as zones of deformed rock. This study focused on analyzing large-scale topographic expressions of thrust faults on Mars. Using high-resolution imagery and topographic data sets, thrust fault-related landforms on Mars were mapped and their topography was analyzed to investigate how they developed. In particular, topography was related to the amount of displacement along the fault planes to systematically study variations of displacement along the fault length. This analysis shows a wide variety of growth strategies for thrust faults on Mars, indicated by varying shapes of the displacement distribution. The identified maximum displacements of the faults were also compared with the total length of the thrust fault map trace. Results show that the population of thrust faults on Mars studied here are similar to those studied on Mercury and Earth.