Exhumed dunes!

A Piece of Mars: The large dunes in the middle of this 375×450 m (0.23×0.28 mi) scene run along a valley (the small dunes at top and bottom are on high ground). What’s amazing about this is that the ends of the large dunes extend into the valley walls. That is, they’re covered by the stuff in the valley walls. Usually dunes sit on top of all the other geologic structures, but not here. These dunes formed a long time ago. And then a lot of sediment piled on top of them – but without destroying them (which is what usually happens on Earth, so we don’t see this sort of thing here). And then those sediments were later eroded to make the 0.5 km wide valley, revealing the buried dunes. Look at all this geology we can do from space! (HiRISE ESP_018347_1660, NASA/JPL/Univ. of Arizona)