Stratigraphy and Surface Ages on Iapetus

Introduction: The examination of the geologic history of Iapetus is a major goal of the Cassini imaging experiment (ISS). Crater counting for the determination of model ages is a powerful tool to understand stratigraphic relationships between different terrain units (e.g., Neukum 1983, Neukum et al. 1998). In the case of Iapetus (Porco et al. 2005), the situation is unusual because this moon has a very large semi-major axis, resulting in unusually low relative velocities of planetocentric impactors. Nevertheless, the surface of Iapetus is heavily cratered, indicating a rather old surface. The shapes of the measured crater-size frequency distributions follow very closely the distribution of Earth’s moon (after correction for the different impact conditions) (Neukum et al. 2006), justifying its usage here for model age determinations. Castillo-Rogez et al. (2007) suggest that the formation of Iapetus has occurred very precisely between 4.5622 and 4.5647 Ga ago. Assuming it took roughly 100 Ma for formation of a rigid surface which is able to hold the cratering record, absolute surface (model) ages can be calibrated to these boundary conditions.