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The discovery of a Martian meteorite may hold the answers scientists have been seeking regarding a 1.8 billion-year-old gap in data, offering new insight into the otherworldly rocks.
So far, scientists have collected around 400 meteorites from Mars, a limited number since beginning research in the 1960s.
According to EurekAlert, the most common samples found are called Shergottites, dating back to 2.4 billion years ago.
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Experts note that while collecting data from the space rocks, there is a gap of approximately 1.8 billion years when trying to understand the geology and history of the red planet.
An artist’s depiction of giant impacts that occurred on Mars 4.5 billion years ago.
(NASA/JPL-Caltech)
The research team led by Boston College Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences Ethan Baxter used samples from a meteorite known as Northwest Africa (NWA) 13441, located in Algeria, and cutting-edge radiogenic isotope techniques to determine the crystallization age and composition of the meteor.
Experts were able to find a rare element called neodymium, consisting of seven isotopes.
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Using these techniques, researchers discovered the meteor to be around 1.273 billion years old, the first discovery in a nearly 2-billion-year period.
Close-up color photograph of Mars. Impact craters are visible on the surface of the planet.
(CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images / Getty Images)
“Martian meteorites of this type are either younger than 600 million years old or approximately 2.4 billion years old,” co-author of the study at Boston College Dylan M. Seal said.
“We dated this sample to be 1.273 billion years old, which fills a roughly 2 billion year gap for which we had no shergottite samples to provide information about magmatic and volcanic activity on Mars,” he continued.
In addition to citing how old the space rock is, experts note that newly acquired data provides important information on what happened during the very early days of the solar system as Mars formed.
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Mars formed very quickly compared to our planet, less than five million years after the birth of the solar system, as it does not have tectonic plates like Earth.
