Oldest meteorite ever found: 4.56 billion year old space rock could reveal the secrets of our solar system's formation

The oldest-ever dated meteorite is helping scientists unravel the mystery of how our solar system was formed.

Known as 'Northwest Africa (NWA) 11119,' the baseball sized meteorite was found in a sand dune in Mauritania.

Now, researchers have dated the record-breaking space rock as being 4.565 billion years old, the Daily Mail reports.

Scientists believe the solar system was formed some 4.6 billion years ago when a cloud of gas and dust collapsed under gravity, possibly triggered by a cataclysmic explosion from a nearby massive star or supernova. 

As this cloud collapsed, it formed a spinning disk with the sun in the center.

They hope the meteorite will shed new light on this process.

“The meteorite we studied is unlike any other known meteorite,” co-author Daniel Dunlap at Arizona State University's Center for Meteorite Studies said.

“It has the highest abundance of silica and the most ancient age (4.565 billion years old) of any known igneous meteorite. 

“Meteorites like this were the precursors to planet formation and represent a critical step in the evolution of rocky bodies in our solar system.”

The research on this meteorite, published today in Nature Communications, provides the first direct evidence that chemically evolved, silica-rich crustal rocks were forming on planetesimals within the first 10 million years of the solar system, prior to the assembly of the terrestrial planets. 

The research began at the University of New Mexico (UNM) with a yet-to-be studied meteorite, called “Northwest Africa (NWA) 11119,” that was found in a sand dune in Mauritania.