Sydney, July 24 - Mars may have been a seething cauldron for nearly a 100 million years after its formation, thwarting evolution of life on the planet, according to an analysis of meteorites.

The research has shown that the red planet remained excessively hot - with temperatures over 1,000 degrees Celsius - for 100 million years following its formation.

A team of scientists from the US, Belgium, and Australia and workers at NASA's Johnson Space Centre, studied the radioactive clocks ticking away in a particularly rare and ancient type of Martian meteorite called a Nakhlite (named after Nakhla in Egypt).

'We were able to reconstruct the time scale for Mars' earliest evolution,' said Craig O'Neill, planetary scientist at Macquarie University.

'Our measurements are up to 20 times more accurate than previous studies, so we've really been able to nail the time scale,' O'Neill said.