I'll look forward to the paper, and don't doubt there's plenty of salts and other hydrated minerals present there. Not sure that allows one to conclude "Ocean!", however -- small amounts of ground water evaporating over long periods of time could create salt deposits too.

I don't know it's because of participating in a forum where Nick hangs out, but I guess the bottom line for me is that my intelligent layperson's take is that a mostly dry Mars sounds about right. I was totally excited reading those abstracts about possible shorelines and such 10 years ago, but I think the preponderance of evidence is going the other way.

Still, it's worth noting that even if "mostly" cold and dry, that is NOT the same as saying Mars is like the Moon! Even if liquid surface water has been rare, there's clealry lots of H2O up there and that has all sorts of implications, from the behavior of ice-rich terrain to occaisional liquid episodes from impacts or volcanism. And in terms of human exploration, having ice or even just hydrated salty soil is way more useful than the mostly dessicated -- really dessicated -- lunar regolith.