"Meridiani is about 1 km too high to be in the "ocean" area.
I have to ask... is '0' what is to be designated as Mars' sea level? Meridiani and Arabia Terra seem to be below 'sea level' here:
A quick look at any map of Mars (for instance the little topographic one that featured in the LPSC article that Rbert recently referred to), shows that Meridiani is an old and heavily cratered terrrain, with the minor modification that some smooth(ish) sheets of "stuff" seem to have been plastered across it, then later partially stripped off. These sheets are the Haematite/sulphate deposits. * Water/acidic or otherwise could have vanished long before the impacts occured, exp. in Arabia Terra to the north of the Meridiani plains. It would be very hard to argue that Mars had an ocean to this depth because many other areas equally elevated, and others even less so, are not smoothed, not surfaced by haematite. * Got me there, lol, but then not all shores, or ancient shores on Earth bare haematite deposits. I still can think of a possible analog and that's still in the Mauritania area. (No, I would never give Nick a hard time!)
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re: Cogent points...
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- Impact structure in Meridiani Planum.