Huge amounts of water — enough to cause catastrophic floods — gushed out of fissures onto the surface of Mars relatively recently, scientists who analyzed photographs of the red planet said on Wednesday. The deluge washed the equivalent of one and a quarter times the water found in Lake Erie onto the surface of the planet near its equator, carving out a series of tear-shaped mesas, the team at the University of Arizona reported. And it was an unusual torrent, spurting from underground much like lava, the scientists report in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.