Story highlights Salt crystal samples from meteorites included traces of organic matter and the "ingredients for life"

Researchers hope to study other meteorite samples in the future

(CNN) Although two 4.5-billion-year-old meteorites crashed to Earth in 1998, it's taken until now to uncover some of their secrets.

The two meteorites, called Monahans and Zag, are the first discovered to contain the ingredients for life: liquid water, amino acids, hydrocarbons and other organic matter.

A chemical-makeup analysis of blue and purple salt and potassium crystals from the meteorites was published in the journal Science Advances on Wednesday.

Although it's not exactly proof that life exists beyond Earth, the traces of water in the salt crystals could date to the earliest days of our solar system. The researchers compared it to finding a prehistoric fly preserved in amber.

A blue crystal recovered from a meteorite that fell near Morocco in 1998.

Before slamming into Earth -- one near a youth basketball game in Texas in March 1998 and another near Morocco in August 1998 -- the meteorites lived in our solar system's asteroid belt for billions of years.

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