The research, led by Zachary Sharp, a professor in UNM’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The study centers on horsetails, a family of hollow-stemmed plants that have survived on Earth for more than 400 million years.

The researchers found that water moving through these plants experiences such a powerful natural purification process that its oxygen isotope composition closely matches that of meteorites and other materials from beyond our planet.

“It’s a meter-high cylinder with a million holes in it, equally spaced. It’s an engineering marvel,” Sharp said. “You couldn’t create anything like this in a laboratory.”