Ancient Meteorite Found in the Sahara Holds Secrets About Mars’ Watery Past

The location is not what makes this finding surprising. The Sahara has long been a kind of natural archive of the history of Earth and the solar system. Among its sands, scientists have found 40-million-year-old fossils and other meteorites. In 2019, for example, a 4.5-billion-year-old fragment was recovered that, according to recent research, may have come from an ancient, now-vanished protoplanet, possibly as large as the moon.

The meteorite, named Teghaza 001, might have remained just another entry in the collection of Martian fragments found on Earth. Although these rocks are extraordinarily useful for studying Mars’ composition and geological history, they often provide limited information about the environmental conditions of its distant past.