A chunk of rock found in the Moroccan desert was found to be a 4.4 billion-year-old piece of Martian crust.
Spectroscopic measurements of the meteorite, nicknamed "black beauty," were found to match with orbital measurements of the Martian dark plains, Brown University reported.
The findings suggest the meteorite represents Mars' "bulk background" of rocks. The space rock is unlike anything that has been discovered on Earth before. Martian rocks found on our planet in the past have been mostly igneous rocks made of cooled volcanic material, but Black Beauty is a breccia. This type of rock is a "mashup" of several different types of rocks welded together in a basaltic matrix.
The researchers hope Black Beauty will provide insight into why the spectral signal of SNC (shergottites, nakhlites, or chassignites) meteorites never match up with remotely sensed specra from the Martian surface. Black Beauty was analyzed using a hyperspectral imaging system that allowed the entire sample to be revealed.
"Other techniques give us measurements of a dime-sized spot," said Kevin Cannon, a Brown University graduate student and lead author of the new paper. "What we wanted to do was get an average for the entire sample. That overall measurement was what ended up matching the orbital data."
The spectral match provides insight into Mars' dark plains, which could reveal what lies beneath the red dust on the surface of the planet.
"This is showing that if you went to Mars and picked up a chunk of crust, you'd expect it to be heavily beat up, battered, broken apart and put back together," Cannon said.
The researchers said the surface of Mars being covered in breccias makes sense from a scientific standpoint.
"Mars is punctured by over 400,000 impact craters greater than 1 [kilometer] in diameter ...," they wrote. "Because brecciation is a natural consequence of impacts, it is expected that material similar to NWA 7034 has accumulated on Mars over time."
The findings were published in a recent edition of the journal Icarus.
