A new study has confirmed a space rock found in Africa's Sahara Desert is the oldest meteorite from Mars ever discovered, dating 4.4 billions years, BBC News reported.

Previous research had suggested the space rock was about two billion years old, but researchers from Florida State University (FSU) believe they have dated the meteorite, nicknamed "Black Beauty," more accurately.

Study lead author Munir Humayan said the meteorite would have come from Mars when the planet was still in its infancy. The team's work is published in the journal Nature.

"This [rock] tells us about one of the most important epochs in the history of Mars," he told BBC News. "It is almost certainly coming from the southern highlands - the cratered terrain that makes up the southern hemisphere of Mars."

The new discovery is one of about 100 known Martian meteorites, but the oldest dated one is 600 million years. Black Beauty would have been from a time of great turmoil on Mars, when volcanoes would have been erupting all over the Red Planet's surface.

"This date is about 100 million years after the first dust condensed in the solar system," Humayun said in a press release. "We now know that Mars had a crust within the first 100 million years of the start of planet building, and that Mars' crust formed concurrently with the oldest crusts on Earth and the Moon."

With this discovery, combined with the information NASA's Curiosity and MAVEN vessels hope to return, space scientists will know more about Mars than they ever previously imagined.

Humayan suggested if there was life on Mars, it was quickly erased in a sweeping volcanic episode.

"The crust of Mars must have differentiated really quickly, rather than gradually over time. There was a big volcanic episode all over the surface, which then crusted up, and after that the volcanism dropped dramatically," he told BBC News. "When it did this it also must have out-gassed water, carbon dioxide, nitrogen and other gases to produce a primordial atmosphere... and also a primordial ocean."

"This is a very exciting period of time - if there were to be life on Mars, it would have originated at this particular time."