SALT LAKE CITY — A bizarre, but beautiful, meteorite discovered in Morocco last year could be the first meteorite to have originated from the planet Mercury.

At a recent conference for planetary academics, scientist and meteorite expert Anthony Irving proposed the possibility that a meteorite known as NWA 7325 would have been ejected from the planet closest to the sun during a large impact, launching material toward Earth.

"It might be a sample from Mercury, or it might be a sample from a body smaller than Mercury but (which) is like Mercury," Irving said during an address to the 44th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.

NWA 7325 is actually not a single meteorite, but was found in 35 pieces in February of 2012. It appears to be about 4.56 billion years old.

Its composition, lacking in the iron found in asteroids and in meteorites originating on Mars, matches very well with the surface composition of the planet closest to the sun.

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It's unusually rich in magnesium and calcium, and gets its striking chartreuse color from chromium deposits.

Another feature indicating possible origin on Mercury is the relative lack of magnetism. Mercury is known to have less intense magnetic fields and would have passed on very little of that magnetic intensity to a rock that formed from magma in its crust.

The NASA spacecraft Messenger is the first to have orbited the tiny inner planet and has been able to study the surface composition in greater detail than ever before, providing some basis for Irving's findings.

However, Irving stressed that only a sample from the surface of the planet could confirm the results.

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