4.4 Billion Year Old Meteorite From Elusive Martian Crust

Excerpt from designntrend.com


Research

on a 4.4 billion-year-old meteorite reveals that it is a piece of the

Red Planet’s crust – the first piece of its kind to reach Earth.
 

The study, which was carried out by researchers at Brown University

suggests the Martian landscape is made largely of composite rocks rather

than the igneous type…

The meteorite colloquially known as Black Beauty, or formally as NWA 7034, was found a few years ago in Morocco.

It is a breccia or a mix of different rock types, which have welded together in a basaltic matrix.    



Some of the components found in the meteorite match rock samples analyzed by the Mars rovers.



Spectroscopic measurements of the meteorite match the orbital

measurements of the Red Planet’s dark plains – areas where the planet’s

coating of red dust is thin and the crust lies exposed…



Black Beauty is illustrative of the “bulk background” of rocks on the

Martian surface, Kevin Cannon, a Brown University graduate student and

lead author of the new paper, said in a statement.

“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 research, co-authored by Jack Mustard from Brown and Carl Agee

from the University of New Mexico, is published in the journal Icarus.



Analysis carried out in 2011, showed that Black Beauty was unlike any

Martian meteorite ever found, most of which belong to igneous rocks

made from cooled volcanic material…

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4.4 Billion Year Old Meteorite From Elusive Martian Crust