Meteorite Provides Evidence for Hydrothermal Activity on Ancient Mars | Sci.News
Scientists from Curtin University and the University of Adelaide have analyzed a 4.45-billion-year-old zircon grain from a famous Martian meteorite called Northwest Africa 7034 (NWA 7034) and found geochemical ‘fingerprints’ of water-rich fluids.
Northwest Africa 7034. Image credit: NASA.
NWA 7034, approximately 320 grams in weight, is a regolith breccia from Mars.
Known more commonly as Black Beauty, this meteorite was discovered in the Moroccan Sahara desert back in 2011.
NWA 7034 contains the oldest Martian igneous material ever dated — about 4.45 billion years old.
“The discovery opened up new avenues for understanding ancient Martian hydrothermal systems associated with magmatism, as well as the planet’s past habitability,” said Curtin University’s Dr. Aaron Cavosie.
“We used nano-scale geochemistry to detect elemental evidence of hot water on Mars 4.45 billion years ago.”
“Hydrothermal systems were essential for the development of life on Earth and our findings suggest Mars also had water, a key ingredient for habitable environments, during the earliest history of crust formation.”
“Through nano-scale imaging and spectroscopy, the team identified element patterns in this unique zircon, including iron, aluminum, yttrium and sodium.”
“These elements were added as the zircon formed 4.45 billion years ago, suggesting water was present during early Martian magmatic activity.”
The authors showed that even though Mars’ crust endured massive meteorite impacts that caused major surface upheaval, water was present during the early pre-Noachian period, prior to about 4.1 billion years ago.
“A 2022 Curtin study of the same zircon grain found it had been ‘shocked’ by a meteorite impact, marking it as the first and only known shocked zircon from Mars,” Dr. Cavosie said.
“This new study takes us a step further in understanding early Mars, by way of identifying tell-tale signs of water-rich fluids from when the grain formed, providing geochemical markers of water in the oldest known Martian crust.”
The findings appear in the journal Science Advances.
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Jack Gillespie et al. 2024. Zircon trace element evidence for early hydrothermal activity on Mars. Science Advances 10 (47); doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adq3694
