Basaltic Sediments, rethinking Mars - again? Options

[djellison]

Personally I feel that a dab of artistic licence to show a higher, less eroded crater rim and ejecta field would have provided a better feel for what it would have looked like.

Me to. But given the time I had to make it - that was never gonna happen.

[Gerald]

... Given the position in relation to Mount Sharp a late stage onlap or downlap would seem more logical. The same logic would apply to the Murray Formation.

It should be possible to discriminate the two hypotheses by their predictions, how the inclination of cross-bedded or deltaic layers are oriented.
They observed (as a key observation) roughly southward oriented inclinations, so it's reasonable to start with testing, whether this will hold during future observations.

Mount Sharp downlap should incline layers away from Mt. Sharp, in general.

Mt. Sharp downlap layers might have been ontop of the base layers, and eroded away (in a mostly aeolian way) by now.