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Asteroid as Old as Earth

Wikipedia has an entry: D-type asteroid. Its list has objects up to about 300km.

The Tagish Lake (meteorite) [from Wikipedia]
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fell on 18 January 2000 in the Tagish Lake area in northwestern British Columbia, Canada.

The meteorite contains an abundance of organic materials, including amino acids.

Tagish Lake contains water. The water is not Earthly contamination but isotopically different from terrestrial water.


It was found that the Tagish Lake meteorite had a pre-entry Apollo type orbit that brought it from the outer reaches of the asteroid belt.

The age of the meteorite is estimated to be about 4.55 billion years thus being a remainder of the period when the solar system was formed.

It has been suggested that the Tagish Lake meteorite was a fragment from a D-type asteroid, and that the Martian moon Phobos is closely related.
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This meteor is as old as Earth (4.54 billion).


I am surprised to discover an asteroid coming from the outer reaches of the asteroid belt, dated before Earth, had amino acids and its water is not like Earth.

Since UV degrades amino acids they have not been found on  Mars yet.

Does this meteor imply organic compounds were common 4.5 billion years ago?
If amino acids are found on Mars are they primordial?


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