The Crazy Mixed-Up Lunar Crust The lunar surface has 43 large, ancient impact basins that excavated and distributed a large amount of material across the entire Moon, affecting the geochemistry of the crust.

The Crazy Mixed-Up Lunar Crust Petro and Pieters mapped the horizontal and vertical distribution of well-mixed basin ejecta on a 1x1º global grid, showing contrasting patterns on the nearside versus farside.

PKT has the highest amount of deeply-mixed basin ejecta FHT and SPAT received smaller amounts of shallowly-mixed ejecta from the 42 (post-SPA) basins Surprisingly, geochemical signatures survived despite all the horizontal and vertical mixing of materials during the basin formation era early in lunar history The Crazy Mixed-Up Lunar Crust The cumulative effects of basin formation directly influenced the observed geochemical terranes, outlined on the map.