Mountain and animals. Because of the less hospitable terrain and climate, mountains tend to be used less for agriculture and more for resource extraction and recreation, such as mountain climbing. The highest mountain on Earth is Mount Everest in the Himalayas of Asia, whose summit is above mean sea level. The highest known mountain on any planet in the Solar System is Olympus Mons on Mars at . There is no universally accepted definition of a mountain. Elevation, volume, relief, steepness, spacing and continuity have been used as criteria for defining a mountain. In the Oxford English Dictionary a mountain is
Tharsis Montes is about across and stands above the ocean floor. The Tharsis Montes volcanoes lie near the equator, along the crest of a vast volcanic plateau called the Tharsis region or Tharsis bulge. The Tharsis region is thousands of kilometers across and averages nearly above the mean elevation of the planet. Olympus Mons, the tallest known mountain in the Solar System, is located about northwest of the Tharsis Montes, at the edge of the Tharsis region. The Tharsis Montes were discovered by the Mariner 9 spacecraft in 1971. They were among the few surface features visible as the spacecraft entered orbit