https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/g5pxx4/a-piece-of-mars-that-fell-in-antarctica-contains-ingredient-for-life-scientists-discover > Humans have been chucking robots over to Mars for decades, but occasionally, Mars does us a literal solid by chucking a piece of itself back over to Earth. In 1984, for instance, scientists discovered a four-pound meteorite from Mars in the Allan Hills region of Antarctica, which is known as Allan Hills 84001. Now, scientists have determined that the four-billion-year-old fallen chunk of Mars contains a key ingredient for life. > According to a recent study in Nature Communications, scientists have identified organic compounds containing nitrogen, a vital building block of life as we know it, inside this rare meteorite. This makes it the first time that nitrogen has been detected in a Martian rock dating back to the period when Mars may have hosted an ocean.