In 1929, a staff member in Purdue University’s biology department opened a drawer and uncovered a tiny black stone. Though only 5 cm long, the rock weighed 800 g—nearly 2 lb—and its origin was a mystery.
For five decades it lay dormant until the 1980s, when scientists extracted gases trapped within the mineral. The atmospheric composition matched that of Mars, confirming the stone as a meteorite from the red planet. The find was christened the Lafayette Meteorite, honoring Purdue’s home town.
While it is well established that Mars once hosted water, recent research challenges the timeline of its disappearance. A 2024 study published in Geochemical Perspectives Letters shows that minerals in the Lafayette Meteorite were in contact with liquid water about 742 million years ago—long after the bulk of Martian oceans vanished.
Although the meteorite’s chemistry indicates a later encounter with liquid water, it does not overturn the broader narrative of Mars’ hydrologic history. The first hints came in 1971 when Mariner 9 spotted what were interpreted as canals. Subsequent missions—Viking, Opportunity, Curiosity—have mapped ancient riverbeds, deltas, and mineral deposits that confirm a once-active water cycle.
Early Mars possessed a dense atmosphere that protected surface water from rapid evaporation. Over time, solar winds and ultraviolet radiation stripped away much of that atmosphere, leaving the planet cold and dry. Today, its polar caps contain frozen water, but the temperatures average about –80 °F, too low for stable liquid water on the surface.
Marissa Tremblay, the study’s lead author, proposes that the Lafayette Meteorite’s water signatures stem from transient melting of permafrost driven by magmatic activity. This scenario aligns with the consensus that Mars’ oceans and rivers dried more than two billion years ago, yet suggests that isolated, short‑lived bodies of liquid water may still form under the right conditions.
The meteorite likely began as debris ejected from Mars following a large asteroid impact. It drifted through space for roughly ten million years before striking Earth. Its eventual arrival in a Purdue drawer remains shrouded in legend.
Historical records differ on the exact year of discovery: Purdue’s archives cite 1929, while some secondary sources claim 1931. A 1935 paper by Harvey Nininger recounts a Black student who witnessed the meteorite’s fall and brought it to the university. In 1919 and 1927, meteor showers were reported near Purdue, and enrollment logs list four Black students—Hermanze Edwin Fauntleroy, Clinton Edward Shaw, Julius Lee Morgan, and Clyde Silance—who could have been involved.
In 2019, researchers identified fungal spores—specifically those that infect corn—on the meteorite, linking the specimen to a 1919 corn outbreak. This forensic evidence points to one of the aforementioned students as the discoverer, though the precise details remain uncertain.
