Northwest Africa 801 is a
carbonaceous chondrite
Carbonaceous chondrites or C chondrites are a class of chondritic meteorites comprising at least 8 known groups and many ungrouped meteorites. They include some of the most primitive known meteorites. The C chondrites represent only a small prop ...
meteorite
A meteorite is a solid piece of debris from an object, such as a comet, asteroid, or meteoroid, that originates in outer space and survives its passage through the atmosphere to reach the surface of a planet or Natural satellite, moon. When the ...
found in 2001 in
Morocco. It has a mass of 5kg and was purchased in Zagora, Morocco. At over 4.5 billions years old, it is older than the
Earth. In November 2019, along with the
Murchison meteorite it was the first to provide evidence of
ribose in space and its transport to Earth, in an analysis of its composition by
gas chromatography mass spectrometry. According to Yoshihiro Furukawa of
Tohoku University, "the extraterrestrial sugar might have contributed to the formation of
RNA
Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is a polymeric molecule essential in various biological roles in coding, decoding, regulation and expression of genes. RNA and deoxyribonucleic acid ( DNA) are nucleic acids. Along with lipids, proteins, and carbohydra ...
on the prebiotic Earth which possibly led to the origin of life."
References
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Chondrite meteorites
Meteorites found in Morocco