“What makes this study so exciting is that it is direct evidence from an actual rock that there was a large protoplanetary body that is no longer around,” said Meenakshi Wadhwa, who studies meteorites at Arizona State University and who was not involved in the new work, to The LA Times.

The research team, led by Farhang Nabiei of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland, used a high-powered electron microscope to study the tiny diamonds found inside the meteorite.