How Mars was Formed

This is my theory on how Mars was formed... I'm not an expert in geology
and this is all theory, but it seems to make good sense to me. I think
this will be disappointing for people who believe in the "big oceans"
theory.

I have been looking at a nice, large map of Mars from an issue of National
Geographic magazine I got about a year ago, showing latest detail from
the Mars orbiters that have been mapping the surface. Any good map of
Mars reveals a surface that can be classified into 3 general types:

1. Areas marked with hundreds of craters
2. Smooth areas with practically no craters, covered in dust.
3. Large canyons and valleys, usually near mountains.

I'm no expert geologist, but after some thought, it appears to me that
the forces that shaped Mars were primarily from a possible early period
of active plate tectonics and continuing volcanism. Water had a very
small part (5%?) in forming the surface of Mars.

Early after Mars was formed, the planet probably resembled Earth very
closely. So much so, that the appearance of canyons, cracks, and mountains
in parts of the surface seem to indicate that Mars started down the road
to having a system of active plate tectonics, just like Earth. This
process, however, seems to have "exhausted out" at some point, and I think
hyperactive volcanism released both energy and the innards of Mars at such
a large rate that it shaped most of the features we see on the planet (think
of Io on a much larger scale) and eventually killed off active geologic
processes of the planet.

Areas of the Martian surface are packed with craters like the moon. These
areas of the surface were thus inactive for at least hundreds of millions
of years. No active geologic processes, no volcanism.

The vast smooth areas of the surface are around giant shield volcanoes.
They have few craters, showing that these huge volcanoes were active
either recently (millions of years ago), or active after intense planetary
bombardment early in Mars' history. The ancient giant volcanoes, like
Olympus Mons, the largest in the solar system, spewed magma for thousands
of square miles, cutting features in the martian terrain that look like
huge riverbeds. Huge amounts of magma settled into the low-lying areas
of the Martian surface.

The powdery soil of Mars that covers most of the planet is a result of the
ash and other material spewed forth from inside the planet that covered
most of the surface, depositing igneous rocks everywhere. The surface of
Mars has extremely high iron content - iron spewed out from the core
of the planet itself in periods of hyperactive volcanism. Mars had a
thicker atmosphere and oxygen in its ancient past, but oxidizing actions
with the massive amounts of iron spewed out in eruptions brought it out
of the atmosphere and form much of the rust-colored appearance we see
today. Perhaps the combination of this ash with the surface material
formed the soil with the weird properties we see in the Spirit photos.

One side effect of the periods of hyperactive volcanism is that these
processes could well have melted ice and brought forth subsurface water
which then flowed across parts of the planet. So much so that small
bodies of water may have existed for thousands of years across various
parts of the planet. Another possibility is that Mars had a thicker
atmosphere and liquid water on the surface for millions of years but
then a long extended period of active volcanism, perhaps triggered
by a catacylsmic event, covered the surface in ash and magma, oxidation
of iron with the atmosphere led to the slow but inevitable drop in
atmospheric density and surface water slowly dissipated. The challenge
will be where to find the places where this water was at, and it
requires boring through the surface layer of dust and ash to see what
lies beneath.

I don't think Spirit will be able to find out much about what happened
prior to the surface being covered in ash and dust. The rocks will
turn out to be all igneous in nature and the rover won't be able to
dig below the surface layer to find out what was there before the
area was covered by volcanic action or asteriod/meteor impact. I'm
starting to think that Gusev crater was once filled with magma, not
water as some have theorized.