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The team estimates that Mars would have lost between 40 and 95 percent of its water via this process in the planet’s Noachian period, which stretches from 4.1 billion to 3.7 billion years ago.

Clearly there was more to extinctions than could be accounted for by a single Noachian deluge, as the Biblical flood was known.

Some of the detected clays are in bedrock that has been exposed by erosion, others have been washed downstream from such sources by the Noachian rivers.

Magmatic precipitation as a possible origin of Noachian clays on Mars.

During this era on Mars—which geologists have dubbed the Noachian Period—volcanic eruptions poured ash and gases into the atmosphere, trapping solar heat and warming the red planet.