A team of space-rock sleuths used video footage, still photographs and rock-hard evidence to reconstruct the January 18 plunge of a fragile cosmic boulder into the frozen Yukon.

The results reveal what happened to the huge asteroid-turned-fireball, and further research of well-preserved fragments is expected to unlock secrets about our solar system's formation and the origin of life on Earth.

The space rock appears to have been hurtling through space since before our Sun formed. Fragments dug from the Yukon snow and ice could contain the oldest material ever studied -- tiny bits of interstellar dust called "nano-diamonds" that joined a swirling dusty disk to eventually become the Sun and the nine planets.

The fragile object, most of which disintegrated as it crashed through Earth's atmosphere, also represents a newly discovered class of charcoal-like, stony asteroids known as carbonaceous chondrites.

On top of all that, the thing stinks.

Scientists say chunks of the space rock were recovered with the care due a multibillion-year-old fossil -- wrapped in Baggies and untouched by human hands. The meteorite has come to be called Tagish Lake, after the frozen lake on which it fell.

"It is not yet known what kinds of pre-solar grains Tagish Lake has, or how much, but the preliminary data ... indicate that there may be a lot in this meteorite," said Jeffrey Grossman of the U.S. Geological Survey. "By studying pre-solar grains, we can learn firsthand about the birth and death of stars, including the birth of our own. These grains can also tell us about how matter in the entire galaxy may evolve."

Grossman, who was not involved in the research but is familiar with it, said the unique texture and chemical makeup of the meteorite hints that there may be many unknown but common types of asteroids in our solar system that are too fragile to make it to Earth.

"Now that we have received something new and different, yet clearly related to previously known materials, we can broaden our understanding of early solar system processes," Grossman told SPACE.com. "Also, this meteorite stinks -- literally. This tells us that there may be volatile compounds in newly fallen meteorites that have never been analyzed before, and which can potentially let us learn more about the origin of life on Earth."

An object the size of a car, but weighing about twice as much as a space shuttle, orbited the sun once every three years in an elliptical pattern, zipping inside Earth's orbit and then swinging out beyond Mars, Brown said. Fate, with a little help from gravity, pulled the object toward our planet.