A rare lunar meteorite that fell to Earth holds evidence of a previously unknown "impact event" that rocked the moon roughly 3.5 billion years ago, researchers say. Studying this ancient impact provides fresh insight into how the solar system was behaving in those early days — about the same time life on Earth began to appear.

In the new study, scientists looked at a lunar meteorite found in northwest Africa. The meteorite, called NWA 12593, contains information about three separate lunar impacts, but the researchers focused on the earliest of these crashes, the team reported in the journal Geology.