For years, a man kept a stone, believing it was gold. It turned out to be even more valuable. (Photo)

In Maryborough Park, Australia, David Howl discovered an unusual stone using a metal detector. It was unusually heavy and had a reddish tint, according to ScienceAlert.

The man took the stone home and tried all the tools he had to break it apart. Howl was convinced that there was a gold nugget inside, as it was found in the Goldfields area, which experienced a gold rush in the 19th century.

Howl used a saw, an angle grinder, a drill, and even acid on the stone. However, not even a sledgehammer could leave a crack on it. This was because it was not a gold nugget, but a meteorite, as Howl learned many years later.

"Its surface had many pockmarks. They form when meteorites pass through the Earth's atmosphere," says geologist Dermot Henry from the Melbourne Museum.

Four years later, Howl was still intrigued by his find, so he decided to take it to the Melbourne Museum.

"We see many stones that people mistake for meteorites. But this one was truly one of them," notes Henry.

Researchers determined that the meteorite is 4.6 billion years old and named it Maryborough after the town near where it was found. The stone weighed 17 kg. Using a diamond saw, scientists cut off a small piece of the meteorite and discovered that it contained a significant amount of iron. This is how researchers realized they were dealing with an ordinary H5 chondrite.

Scientists also observed tiny crystallized mineral inclusions known as chondrules.

While researchers cannot pinpoint exactly where this meteorite came from, they do have some theories.

Once, the Solar System was merely a swirling mass of dust and chondritic material. Eventually, gravity gathered all this chaos into planets, while leftover materials formed a massive asteroid belt.

"This particular meteorite likely originated from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It could have been ejected by several asteroids colliding with each other," explains the scientist.

Radiocarbon dating revealed that the meteorite had been on Earth for between 100 and 1,000 years. Records indicate that a meteorite fell in the region where Maryborough was found sometime between 1889 and 1951.

According to scientists, the meteorite is much rarer than gold, making it more valuable.

As a reminder, scientists have discovered where 90% of meteorites that land on Earth actually come from. Until now, astronomers could only find the source of meteorites for a small group of space rocks, but now researchers have figured out where almost all meteorites found on Earth originated.