Unlike, familiar volcanoes - such as Etna or St Helens on Earth, or indeed Olympus Mons on Mars - supervolcanoes do not build mountains out of layers of lava. "If future work shows that supervolcanoes were present more widely on ancient Mars, it would completely change estimates of how the atmosphere formed from volcanic gases, how sediments formed from volcanic ash and how habitable the surface might have been," emphasised Dr Michalski. "Commenting on the research, Mars expert Dr Peter Grindrod, from Birkbeck, University of London, said:"Understanding ancient terrains on Earth is extremely difficult because of subsequent processes hiding or removing the evidence - attempting to understand the earliest periods of Mars' history is even more challenging, as in addition we are limited to data returned from spacecraft. "Were such an event to happen on Mars, it could either cool the globe or warm it. The latter could lead to episodes of surface water flow, responsible for carving some of the medium-size valley systems on Mars.".
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24348673%23sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
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