Before life was sustainable on Earth, it may have first existed on Mars, BBC News reported.

New research, presented by professor Steven Benner at the Goldschmidt Meeting in Florence, Italy, suggests the red planet had the building blocks necessary for life, just much earlier than Earth did.

Benner, of Westheimer Institute of Science and Technology in Gainesville, U.S., further added to the discussion of life on Mars and the timeline of events that led to the red planet becoming the barren desert it is today.

Living organisms need three crucial components: RNA, DNA and proteins and scientists have long speculated how atoms first assembled such building blocks. RNA is the first of these believed to appear, but it needs to be "templated" into shape. The materials necessary for that to happen likely would have been washed away in the oceans of early Earth, but Benner said it would have been possible on Mars.

Benner said his results showed the elements boron and molybdenum to be vital for forming atoms needed to build life-giving molecules.

"It's only when molybdenum becomes highly oxidised that it is able to influence how early life formed," Benner said. "This form of molybdenum couldn't have been available on Earth at the time life first began, because three billion years ago, the surface of the Earth had very little oxygen, but Mars did."

He also said boron is scarce on Earth because the climate is not dry enough, further supporting it likely came from one much drier, like Mars.

"It's yet another piece of evidence which makes it more likely life came to Earth on a Martian meteorite, rather than starting on this planet," Benner said. "The evidence seems to be building that we are actually all Martians; that life started on Mars and came to Earth on a rock."

Regardless of life on Earth and the truth behind its origins, Benner said we are all lucky to end up on this planet.

"It's lucky that we ended up here, nevertheless - as certainly Earth has been the better of the two planets for sustaining life," Benner said. "If our hypothetical Martian ancestors had remained on Mars, there may not have been a story to tell."