Huge ‘Black Beauty’ meteorite from MARS found in Sahara reveals clues for life on Red Planet

A RARE meteorite from Mars has stunned scientists who want to know whether life ever existed on the planet.

The so-called “Black Beauty” was discovered in the Saharan Desert in 2011, and now experts believe it reveals some key clues about the Red Planet.

AlamyIs there life on Mars?[/caption]

When first studied in 2013, it was believed the rock dated back about 2.1billion years ago.

Boffins have been looking at the various minerals to see if it gives anything away.

Though they still can’t say for definite whether life did indeed thrive on Mars, if it did, they now have a better idea of when.

Previous studies predicted that the red planet might have had conditions suitable for life some 4.2billion years ago.

But this was based on no evidence of shock damage from large scale impacts, like the one that eventually ended dinosaurs on Earth.

One material in particular has caught scientist’s eyes, called zircon, because it looks like it went through a tough bashing at one point.

This means the “habitability window” on the planet might be millions of years later than thought.

Experts say it could be more like 3.7billion to 3.9billion years ago.

“This grain is truly a one-off gift from the Red Planet,” Morgan Cox from Curtin’s Space Science and Technology Centre.

“High-pressure shock deformation has not previously been found in any minerals from Black Beauty.

“This discovery of shock damage in a 4.45billion-year-old Martian zircon provides new evidence of dynamic processes that affected the surface of early Mars.”

So while we still don’t know if there was any life, we now know how long ago it could have been home to something.

The study was published in the Science Advances journal.

NASAThe ‘Black Beauty’[/caption]

In other news, Apple has revealed a bunch of new emoji for iPhone, including a pregnant man and two saucy symbols.

Experts have warned that future space launches could be jeopardised if “stupid” regimes like Russia don’t stop blasting the skies creating debris.

And the most popular phone since the millennium has been unveiled, with many shocked to find out it’s not an iPhone.

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