The inventory of meteorites from Mars is astoundingly small: Less than 400 of the known space rocks identified here hail from the Red Planet.
Even smaller is the number of nakhlites and chassignites, two of the three main types of Martian meteorites, of which there are only 35 samples in the world put together, according to The Meteoritical Society. But scientists haven’t known much about them, despite having had many of the rocks for decades. James Day, a geologist and geochemist at UC San Diego, wanted to unlock their secrets.
After he and a team of scientists conducted the first comprehensive analysis of this collection, they made an unexpected find — a new Martian rock type — but without the actual rock or any others matching its description on Earth.
The discovery is based on a cryptic geochemical signature embedded within some of the specimens. That distinct rock type is probably Mars’ crust, according to the research published in the journal Science Advances.
Support authors and subscribe to content
This is premium stuff. Subscribe to read the entire article.