In 2015, Australian prospector David Hole searched for gold in Maryborough Regional Park, near Melbourne, with his metal detector. While this wasn't an unusual outing for the prospector, what he discovered was. He unearthed an unusually heavy reddish rock, which he suspected was a gold nugget at the time.

He took the rock home and tried everything to crack it open - saws, hammers, even acid -- but nothing worked. Years later, he took the rock to the Melbourne Museum to have them identify it. To his astonishment, geologists revealed that this "rock" was no rock at all but a rare 4.6 billion-year-old meteorite.

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Named after the park where it was found, the Maryborough meteorite weighs 17 kilograms (about 37.5 pounds) and has been identified as an H5 ordinary chondrite. According to Museums Victoria, this means that it contains chondrules, which are tiny crystallized droplets of metallic minerals that formed during the early stages of the solar system.

Museums Victoria geologist Dermot Henry told The Sydney Morning Herald that the meteorite's sculpted, dimpled surface was formed as it burned through the Earth's atmosphere. Henry, who has examined thousands of suspected meteorites throughout his decades-long career, commented that only two of the rocks he's examined turned out to be real meteorites and this was one of them.

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Researchers who have studied the meteorite determined its unique composition includes a high percentage of iron and other elements that can only be found in space. According to Museums Victoria, the meteorite likely originated in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Carbon dating suggests that the Maryborough meteorite landed on Earth between 100 and 1,000 years ago. Historical records of meteor sightings near Maryborough, dating back to 1889, may provide clues about its arrival.

Meteorites like this offer invaluable insights into the formation and evolution of the solar system. "They transport us back in time, providing clues to the age, formation and chemistry of our solar system (including Earth)," Henry said in a media release from Museums Victoria.