TEGHAZA 001, Sahara Desert — Scientists have identified a rose-colored meteorite discovered in the Sahara Desert in 2022 as one of the oldest known pieces of Mars ever found on Earth, offering an unprecedented glimpse into the Red Planet's earliest history.
At more than 4.1 billion years old, Teghaza 001 preserves evidence of Mars' early crust formation from cooling magma, later altered by interactions with liquid water — a rare combination that gives researchers a unique window into a critical period of Martian evolution.
The meteorite, weighing nearly two pounds (800 grams), was found in the Sahara Desert in 2022. Its mineral composition and zircon crystals indicate it formed from cooling magma deep within the ancient Martian crust before being altered by water. Zircon crystals within the rock served as geological time-keepers, allowing scientists to determine that water interacted with the rock around 4.1 billion years ago, suggesting the crust itself formed even earlier.
“It was only after we started looking closely that we realized this meteorite is really unique,” said lead author Yang Liu of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “One of the paper’s reviewers called it a Rosetta Stone for Mars.”
Teghaza 001 stands out among the roughly 435 Martian meteorites previously identified on Earth. Most provide only limited snapshots of the planet’s history, but this specimen appears to preserve evidence of multiple stages of Mars' early evolution. Its mineralogy closely resembles materials observed from orbit by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and researchers believe it originated from the heavily cratered southern highlands of Mars, one of the oldest regions on the planet.
The findings, published in Science, provide the first direct laboratory sample of Mars' ancient crust from a region never before available for study. Using a precise rubidium-strontium isotope dating technique that examines individual mineral grains rather than dissolving bulk samples, researchers could analyze a fragment smaller than a fingernail while preserving most of the meteorite intact for future investigations.
Co-author Francois Tissot of Caltech helped apply the method, which is among the very few techniques capable of age-dating ancient rocks while preserving rare planetary samples. "Right now, we are one of very few labs in the world able to perform this kind of age-dating, and the first to date such an ancient Martian meteorite," Tissot said.
The work adds to growing evidence that ancient Mars hosted an active water cycle far earlier in its history than many scientists once suspected. While Mars today is cold, dry and largely inhospitable, findings such as Teghaza 001 continue to accumulate that billions of years ago it was a very different world, with rivers, lakes and possibly even oceans.
"We've only scratched the surface," Liu said. "The rock contains a wealth of information about early Martian geology, water activity, and possibly even atmospheric evolution. Researchers expect many more studies to follow as laboratories around the world analyze the sample in greater detail."
For scientists trying to reconstruct the story of ancient Mars, Teghaza 001 may become one of the most important clues ever found — a rose-colored time capsule from the Red Planet's earliest chapters.
