Bedouin tribesmen found a rock in the Sahara desert that is believed to be straight from Mars.
Researchers believe the space rock is the first sample of Mars' crust ever discovered, and researchers hope it will reveal a number of red planet secrets, a Florida State University news release reported.
Researchers performed a "complex analysis" on the meteorite using "highly sophisticated mass spectrometers in the MagLab's geochemistry department." They found high concentrations of trace metals like iridium, which suggested the rock came from a Martian crater.
"This cratered terrain has been long thought to hold the keys to Mars' birth and early childhood," Munir Humayun, a professor in FSU's Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science and a researcher at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (MagLab), said.
This is the first sample from this area that scientists have ever been able to get their hands on; researchers believe it could tell tales of early crustal growth on the red planet.
The researchers analyzed the meteorite, and were able to determine the thickness of Mars' crust, the results agreed with past estimates made by independent spacecrafts. The finding suggests that Mars did not experience a large impact event that affected the entire planet, as has been previously believed.
Using diamonds inside the meteorite called zircons, the researchers determined the meteorite was 4.4 billion years old.
"This date is about 100 million years after the first dust condensed in the solar system," Humayun said. "We now know that Mars had a crust within the first 100 million years of the start of planet building, and that Mars' crust formed concurrently with the oldest crusts on Earth and the Moon."
The researchers hope the meteorite will help them reveal the impact history of Mars, the early composition of the planet, and the nature of the ancient zircons found within the meteorite.
