Geology
The crater's youth was inferred from many signs of a fresh impact. These include the presence of a field of secondary craters, the lack of additional cratering, preserved impact melt in the crater and that the central peak of the crater has not been buried by sediment.
Research published in the journal Icarus has found pits in Tooting Crater that are caused by hot ejecta falling on ground containing ice. The pits are formed by heat forming steam that rushes out from groups of pits simultaneously, thereby blowing away from the pit ejecta.
Due to the flatness of the surrounding lava flows (at 3872 m below Martian datum), it is possible to infer much about the crater's formation and ejecta blanket. For example, the volume of ejecta deposited from the formation of the crater is estimated to be 450 cubic kilometres and that this process took less than half an hour.
The crater is asymmetric because the meteorite that formed it struck obliquely, travelling northeast on impact.
Read more about this topic: Tooting (crater)