CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.—A 4 billion-year-old meteorite from Mars that caused a splash here on Earth decades ago contains no evidence of ancient, primitive Martian life after all, scientists reported Thursday. In 1996, a NASA-led team announced that organic compounds in the rock appeared to have been left by living creatures. Other scientists were skeptical and researchers chipped away at that premise over the decades, most recently by a team led by the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Andrew Steele. Tiny samples from the meteorite show the carbon-rich compounds are actually the result of water—most likely salty, or briny, water—flowing over the rock for a prolonged period, Steele said. The findings appear in the journal Science. During Mars’ wet and early past, at least two impacts occurred near the rock, heating the planet’s surrounding surface, before a third impact bounced it off the red planet and into space millions of years ago. …