Atmosphere of Mars turned to stone

Scientists at the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre, the University of Glasgow and the Natural History Museum in London may have discovered how Mars lost its early carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere to become the cold and arid planet we know today. This research provides the first direct evidence from Mars of a process, called 'carbonation' which currently removes carbon dioxide from our own atmosphere, potentially combating climate change on Earth. It is widely recognised that accumulation of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere is contributing to global warming. The loss of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere of Mars, however, around 4000 million years ago is likely to have caused the planet to cool. So understanding how carbon dioxide was removed from the Martian atmosphere could lead to new ways of reducing the accumulation of greenhouse gases in our own atmosphere. In a paper published in the journal Nature , the research team describe analyses of a Martian meteorite known as Lafayette, sourced from the research collections of the Natural History Museum in London and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. It formed from molten rock around 1300 million years ago, and was blasted from the surface of Mars by a massive impact 11 million years ago.