Research by Mark Jellinek, Dept. of Earth and Ocean Sciences, and collaborators at Rice University suggests that the presence of liquid water on the surfaces of Mars and Venus could be a key factor to determine if plate tectonics occurred on these planets in the geologic past – similar to plate tectonics on Earth.
Earlier in solar-system history, however, when they were warmer, Mars and Venus did have volcanoes, perhaps comparable to hot-spot volcanoes on Earth.
This recently published new evidence has recently been featured in Nature Geoscience.
