A newly found Mars meteorite is revealing the secrets of a previously hidden time period of Red Planet geological history.
The 1.27-billion-year-old space rock, called Northwest Africa (NWA) 13441, was discovered in Algeria in 2019 — but its age was not confirmed until recently. Now scientists say the meteorite helps answer questions about a huge gap in the Martian geologic record: a span of time between 600 million years ago and 2.4 billion years ago.