A 4-billion-year-old meteorite from Mars that caused a stir on Earth decades ago contains no evidence of primitive life on the Red Planet, scientists have reported. In 1996, a NASA-led team announced that the organic compounds discovered in that body had apparently been left behind by living creatures. Others, skeptics and various researchers, were undermining the premise for decades. A team led by Andrew Steele of the Carnegie Institution for Science did the latest study. Small samples of the body reveal that the carbon-rich elements are actually the result of water — quite possibly salty or brackish — that flowed over the rock over a long period of time, Steele said. The findings were published in the journal Science.
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