An article published in the journal “Nature Communications” reports evidence of the existence of a river of a size comparable to that of the great European rivers such as Po and Rhine in the Izola mensa area, an outcrop within the large Hellas Planitia basin on the planet Mars. A team of researchers led by Dr. Francesco Salese and Dr. William McMahon examined high-resolution images captured by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) space probe to identify traces of an area where some 3.7 billion years ago there was a large river. The environmental conditions had to be favorable to a constant flow of water for a long period with a hydrological cycle, yet another confirmation that at the time the red planet was similar to Earth.