Since the meteorite was so rare ... In addition, none of the graves contained any gold, silver, gems, or foreign items, which supports the theory that meteoric iron was not reserved for elites.

The discovery of a massive crater formed by the impact of a meteorite more than three billion years ago is changing the way scientists view the history of Earth and the planet's stages of evolution.

Scientists think they may have come from space. For years scientists had been finding organic compounds in meteorites, but could not rule out the possibility that they were Earth-based contamination.