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Evgenii Krestianinov, PhD candidate, Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University

Sahara space rock 4.5 billion years old upends assumptions about the early Solar System

Steve Jurvetson / Wikimedia, CC BY-SA

In May 2020, some unusual rocks containing distinctive greenish crystals were found in the Erg Chech sand sea, a dune-filled region of the Sahara Desert in southern Algeria.

On close inspection, the rocks turned out to be from outer space: lumps of rubble billions of years old, left over from the dawn of the Solar System.

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