The Lafayette meteorite was discovered in a drawer at Purdue University in 1931, with no clear indication of how it got there. A new analysis of the rock reveals evidence of liquid water on Mars 742 million years ago.

A sliver of Martian rock that once lay hidden in a university drawer has helped researchers better understand the Red Planet’s geological history. Using isotopic dating, a team at Purdue University has determined that the “Lafayette Meteorite” likely interacted with liquid water approximately 742 million years ago.

Despite the team's success in dating the water-rock interaction, the researchers don't think Mars was teeming with water at that time in history. Rather, they suspect the water came from permafrost melt, perhaps caused by molten rock moving through the planet's crust. The study appears in the Geochemical Perspectives Letters.

An asteroid struck Mars 11 million years ago and sent pieces of the red planet hurtling through space. One of these chunks of Mars eventually crashed into the Earth somewhere near Purdue University and is one of the few meteorites that can be traced directly to Mars.

The study identified when water interacted with the meteorite and established that the dating was unaffected by events after it left Mars.

The unlikely journey that brought the Lafayette Meteorite to Purdue University’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences began 11 million years ago. An unknown object struck Mars with enough force to launch fragments of the planet into space.