Bleier was finding lots of evidence of meanders and such. As I recall (well, given my frequent brain farts, no guarantees on memory are offered here... ;-0) he was finding considerable indications that could be interpreted as evidence of liquid water filling craters from below and flowing in channels from them. I recall -- but cannot now find -- images of small craters seemingly ice covered with small channels (possibly also ice-covered) issuing from them. The channels seemed to end abruptly although there could have been fans below the resolution limit of the camera, or they could have been buried by ever-present dust.

The evidence cited by Malin as the "smoking gun" is interesting because it is strongly suggests a past episode or episodes of liquid water breaking out through the surface near Holden crater and flowing out onto the plain and into another crater ("Holden NE" -- which I suspect is not an impact structure but is instead a collapse formation) where the distributory fan is now found. There is abundant similar evidence all over the planet, though none I'm aware of that is quite so dramatic.

The argument can be made that all this happened billions and billions of years ago, but the evidence of such antiquity cannot be produced remotely. We simply don't know. However, the appearance here suggests that the flows which produced this fan were not necessarily so early in Martian history and could well have occurred relatively recently. The indications of evaporite on the margins, for example, are interesting and perhaps illuminating.

Now that the field has pretty much accepted the Cold Mars model (so effervescently promoted by that Australian fellow...) we need to think about how all the evidence of liquid water flow can be produced if Mars has almost always been ever-so-cold. I say many of the flow features (and the ones here) are due to release of water from the interior onto the surface. That release (IMHO) continues on a small scale to this day.

But there are all these models which demonstrate the "impossibility" of sufficient internal heat retention to allow meltwater at the surface. These models may be in error.

What would cause the interior of Mars to be warmer today than might otherwise be expected, and what would the effect of that internal warmth be on the present and past surface?

Cheers, BFelix