What is a Meteorite?

A meteorite is a rock that was formed elsewhere in the Solar System, was orbiting the sun or a planet for a long time, was eventually captured by Earth’s gravitational field, and fell to Earth as a solid object. A meteoroid is what we call the rock while it is in orbit and before it is decelerated by the Earth’s atmosphere. A meteor is the visible streak of light that occurs as the rock passes through the atmosphere and exterior of the rock is heated to incandescence.  Most (~99.8%) meteorites are pieces of asteroids. A few rare meteorites come from the Moon (0.1%) and Mars (0.1%).

A road sign in Newfoundland

How Do We Know That They Are Meteorites? Lunar meteorites look a lot like some Earth rocks. We know that they came from space, however, because like asteroidal meteorites, lunar meteorites have fusion crusts from the melting that occurs during the deceleration by the Earth’s atmosphere (the olive-green crust on the photo above).  Also, they contain certain isotopes that can only be produced by reactions with penetrating cosmic rays while outside the Earth’s atmosphere.

How Do We Know That They Come From the Moon?

Chemical compositions, isotope ratios, minerals, and textures of the lunar meteorites are all similar to those of samples collected on the Moon during the Apollo missions.  Taken together, these various characteristics are different from those of any other type of meteorite or terrestrial rock.  For example, all of those meteorites in the List that are classified as feldspathic breccias are rich in the mineral anorthite, which is a plagioclase feldspar, mineralogically, and a calcium aluminum silicate, chemically.  Consequently, these meteorites all have high concentrations of aluminum and calcium.  Because of some unique aspects about how the Moon formed, the lunar highlands are composed predominantly of anorthite.  Anorthite is much less common on asteroids and, to the best of our knowledge, on the surface of any other planet or planetary satellite.

More Detail:   See “How Do We Know That It’s a Rock From the Moon?”

Do All Lunar Meteorites Come from One Big Impact on the Moon?

The lunar crater Daedalus, about 93 kilometers (58 miles) in diameter, was photographed by the crew of Apollo 11 as they circled the Moon in 1969. NASA photo AS11-44-6611.

For several reasons, we know that the lunar meteorites derive from many different impacts on the Moon. The textural and compositional variety spans, and in some ways exceeds, that of rocks collected on the six Apollo missions, so the meteorites must come from various locations. More importantly, it is possible to determine how long ago a rock left the Moon using cosmic-ray exposure ages. Small rocks on the surface of the Moon and in orbit around the Sun or Earth are exposed to cosmic rays. The cosmic rays are so energetic that they cause nuclear reactions in the meteoroids that change one nuclide (isotope) into another. Some of those nuclides produced are radioactive. As soon as they fall to Earth, production stops because the Earth’s atmosphere absorbs nearly all cosmic rays. The radionuclides decay on Earth with no further production. The most well-know such isotope is 14C (carbon 14), which is produced from oxygen atoms in the meteoroid. Other important radionuclides produced by cosmic-ray exposure are 10Be, 26Al, 36Cl, and 41Ca. Because the various radionuclides all have different half-lives, it is often possible to tell how long a rock was exposed on or near the surface of the Moon, how long it took to travel to Earth, and how long ago it fell. For example, cosmic-ray exposure data for Kalahari 008/009 suggest that the meteorite left the Moon only a few hundred years ago. At the other extreme, Dhofar 025 took 13-20 million years to get here (Nishiizumi & Caffee, 2001). Because there is a wide range in the Earth-Moon transit times, we know that many impacts on the Moon were required to launch the lunar meteorites.

There are persuasive arguments (cosmic-ray exposure ages, chemical and mineral composition) that the “YAMM” meteorites, Yamato 793169, Asuka 881757, MIL 05035, and MET 01210 are source-cratered paired or launch paired, that is, the four meteorites were ejected from the Moon as separate rocks by a single impact, the rocks traveled to Earth separately, and that they fell to Earth at different places (Warren, 1994; Arai et al., 2005; Zeigler et al., 2007). Other likely cases of launch pairing are the “YQE” meteorites, Yamato 793274/981031, QUE 94281 and EET 87521/96008 (Arai and Warren, 1999, Korotev et al., 2003) and the “NL” meteorites, NWA 032/479 and LAP (Zeigler et al., 2005). Almost certainly, some of the numerous feldspathic lunar meteorites are source-crater paired. So, the lunar meteorites represent somewhat fewer impact sites on the Moon than the number of meteorites (list).   

Does It Take a Big Impact to Launch a Lunar Meteoroid?

On the basis of impact probability and the known size distribution of lunar craters, Paul Warren (1994) makes a persuasive case that lunar meteorites come from relatively small craters — those of only a few kilometers in diameter.  The main thrust of his argument is that all the lunar meteorites were blasted off the Moon in the last ~20 million years (most in the last few hundred thousand years) and that there haven’t been enough “big” impacts on the Moon in that time to account for all the different lunar meteorites.  As new lunar meteorites are found each year, Warren’s argument becomes more valid. James Head (2001) calculates on a theoretical basis that impacts causing craters as small as 450 m (about a quarter of a mile) in diameter can launch lunar meteorites. (That’s big if it happens in your backyard, but it’s not so big for the whole Moon.) If lunar meteorites come from such small craters, it would be especially difficult to locate the actual source crater of a particular lunar meteorite.

Where on the Moon Did They Come From?  Are Any from the Far Side of the Moon?

Although scientists sometimes like to speculate that a certain lunar meteorite came from a certain crater or region of the Moon, no one has actually identified with certainty the source crater from which any of the lunar meteorites originated.

To the best of my knowledge, lunar meteorites come from randomly distributed locations on the Moon, so we can assume that about half of them come from the far side. We just don’t know which ones those are. Thus, there is no scientific basis for a statement in a recent advertisement on e-Bay: “The ONLY LUNAR meteorite from the dark side of the moon.” (Also, of course, the “dark side” of the Moon keeps changing with lunar phase! Except for some locations at the poles, any place in the dark will be sunlit 14 days later.)

For any given lunar meteorite, the probability is not exactly 50-50 that it came from either the near side or the far side. There is more mare basalt on the near side than the far side (FeO map below), so the chance is better than 50-50 that an iron-rich meteorite (mare basalt or basaltic breccia) is from the near side and that an iron-poor meteorite (feldspathic) is from the far side. As explained below, Sayh al Uhaymir 169 almost certainly derives from the near side.

How Big Are They? The largest single stones are Kalahari 009 at 13.5 kg (30 lbs) and Northwest Africa 5000 at 11.5 kg (25 lbs). The next biggest are the ten stones of NWA 2995 et al. at 2.99 kg (6.6 lbs), NWA 3163 and paired pieces at 2.45 kg (5.4 lbs), and the 6 paired LAP stones at 1.93 kg (4.3 lbs). Several of the lunar meteorite fragments found in Antarctica and Oman only weigh a few grams (a U.S. nickel weighs 5 grams). The smallest named stones are Graves Nunataks 06157 at 0.788 g and Dar al Gani 1048 at 0.801 grams. The plot to the left shows meteorite mass (all stones of a given meteorite).

Another measure of rarity is mass. The total mass of all known lunar meteorites is only about 33 kg (72 lbs.). By comparison, the Allende and Jilin meteorites (both stony) are 2 and 4 metric tons (2000 and 4000 kg) each while several iron meteorites weigh more than 10 tons! (e.g., Hoba, Gibeon, Campo del Cielo).

No lunar meteorite has yet been found in North America, South America, or Europe. We can reasonably assume that lunar meteorites have fallen on these continents in the past 100,000 years, but if someone has found one, it’s not yet been recognized as a lunar meteorite.

Where, How, and When Are They Found?

In the lingo of meteoritics, all lunar meteorites have been “finds;” none are “falls.” In other words, no lunar meteorite has been observed as a meteor. This is a curious fact as there are fewer martian meteorites than lunar meteorites yet several of the martian meteorites were observed to fall (Chassigny, Shergotty, Nakhla, and Zagami).

Nearly all lunar meteorites have been found in areas that are well known to be good places to find meteorites.  All such places are dry deserts where there are geologic mechanisms for concentrating meteorites, where rocks of terrestrial origin are rare, and where meteorites do not weather away quickly from exposure to water.  Many lunar meteorites have been found in Antarctica (see “Why Antarctica”) by expeditions funded by the U.S. (ANSMET) or Japanese (NIPR) governments. A number of lunar meteorites have been found in the Sahara Desert of northern Africa. About half of all lunar meteorites stones have been found in Oman - all since 2000. The meteorites from hot deserts were mainly found by private collectors or local people. Allan Hills 81005 (ALHA81005), the first meteorite to be recognized as originating from the Moon, was found during the 1981—82 ANSMET collection season, on 18 January 1982.  The three Yamato 79xxx meteorites were collected earlier, but not recognized to be of lunar origin until after 1982.  The first lunar meteorite to be found appears to be Yamato 791197, on 20 November 1979.

ANSMET 1988-89 field team searching for meteorites in "Meteorite Moraine" near Lewis Cliff.    ANSMET ANSMET (Antarctic Search for Meteorites) is a program funded by the United States government through the Office of Polar Programs of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Solar System Exploration Division of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in cooperation with the National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution).

In 1982 the first lunar meteorite to be recognized, ALHA 81005, was announced in the scientific literature. The first from the Sahara Desert, Dar al Gani 262, was announced in 1997 and since 2000 many from Oman have been described. This plot shows the number of distinct meteorites. The number of stones is greater because some meteorites have broken into two or more stones, each of which has been given a different name.

How Do I Recognize a Lunar Meteorite?

Although the discovery that there are rocks on Earth that originated from the Moon is relatively new, lunar rocks have surely been dropping from the sky throughout geologic history.  Mikhail Nazarov and colleagues of the Vernadasky Institute in Moscow estimate that “several tens or few hundred kilograms” of lunar rocks in the mass range of 10-1000 g strike the Earth’s surface every year. That fact does not make lunar meteorites easy to find or recognize, however.  Under ideal conditions (e.g., Antarctica), some lunar meteorites are almost instantly recognizable as lunaites because they have fusion crusts that are highly vesicular. No Earth rock and no other kind of meteorite has a fusion crust that is as vesicular as that of lunar meteorites QUE 93069 or PCA02007. Some lunar meteorites (the basalts) do not have vesicular fusion crusts, however, and the fusion crust of some lunar meteorites found in hot deserts has been ablated away by the wind. In the absence of a fusion crust, a lunar (or martian) meteorite is less likely to be recognized as a meteorite than is an asteroidal meteorite because it more closely resembles terrestrial rocks in mineralogy and density. A weathered lunar meteorite would not be an impressive or suspicious looking rock if found in a cornfield or streambed (see Dar al Gani 400 or QUE94281) and a brecciated lunar meteorite could easily be overlooked in the field as a terrestrial sedimentary rock. Even experienced meteorite collectors admit that Kalahari 009 does not “look like” any kind of meteorite. Lunar meteorites contain a much smaller amount of metal than ordinary chondrites, so they are only very weakly magnetic.  Also, they have densities similar to terrestrial rocks; they’re not heavy for their size, as are most meteorites. Although he has studied Apollo lunar rocks for more than 30 years, the writer of this article did not recognize the MAC88105 lunar meteorite as a Moon rock when another member of the 1988 ANSMET team handed it to him in the field and asked “What do you think about this one?”  Unfortunately, lunar meteorites and some kinds of Earth rocks strongly resemble each other in hand specimen. Only expensive and time-consuming tests can prove that a rock is a lunar (or martian) meteorite.

More Detail:   See “How Do We Know That It’s a Rock From the Moon?”

How Are They Named? By long-standing convention, meteorites are named after the location where they fall or are found.  For example, Calcalong Creek is a place in Australia.  Somewhat contrary to the convention, the Antarctic meteorites in the U.S. collection often go by abbreviated names, where ALHA = Allan Hills, EET = Elephant Moraine, GRA = Graves Nunataks, LAP = LaPaz Icefield, LAR = Larkman Nunatak, MAC = MacAlpine Hills, MET = Meteorite Hills, MIL = Miller Range, PCA = Pecora Escarpment, and QUE = Queen Alexandra Range.  Similarly, the Dar al Gani (Libya), Northeast Africa, Northwest Africa, and Sayh al Uhaymir meteorites are sometimes abbreviated DaG, NEA, NWA, and SaU.  Because hundreds to thousands of meteorites have been found in Antarctica and hot deserts, serial numbers are used in addition to names.  For the Antarctic meteorites, the first two digits of the numeric part of the name represents the collection year. (See map of Antarctic meteorite locations for the U.S. collection.)

MacAlpine Hills 88105 is a lunar meteorite found in Antarctica in 1989

What’s the Difference Between a Lunar Meteorite and a Tektite? A lunar meteorite is a meteorite from the Moon. A tektite is not a meteorite (it never orbited the sun or Earth) and it’s not from the Moon. A tektite was formed from Earth material during the impact of a meteoroid. Tektites consist of glass and are often shaped like spheres, dumbbells, or teardrops. Lunar meteorites never have such interesting shapes and none are composed entirely of glass. Tektites have compositions like terrestrial rocks, not like lunar rocks.

How Are Lunar Meteorites Classified?

Lunar rocks are classified by what minerals they contain (mineralogy), how the mineral grains are put together (texture), how the rock formed (petrology), and chemical composition (chemistry).  These different parameters sometimes leads to confusion because a geochemist might call a rock “feldspathic” (dominant mineral) or “aluminum rich” (chemical composition) while a petrologist might call it an “anorthosite” (mineral proportions and implied mode of formation) or “regolith breccia” (texture and and type of rock components).

Since the time of Galileo, the lunar surface has been divided into two types of terrane, the mare (pronounced mar'-ay, which is the Latin word for sea) and the terra (land) or highlands. 

Feldspars are some of the most common minerals of the crust of the Earth and Moon.  Rocks of the lunar highlands contain a high proportion (70-99%) of a type of feldspar known as plagioclase.  In particular, the plagioclase of the lunar highlands is the calcium-rich variety known as anorthite (the more sodium-rich varieties are rare on the Moon).  Mineralogically, a rock composed mostly of the anorthite is called an anorthosite, and most rocks of the lunar highlands are, in fact, anorthosites.  Lunar scientists often refer to the highlands crust as “feldspathic,” indicating the major mineral, or “anorthositic,” indicating the major rock type.  Anorthite, like all forms of feldspar, is rich in aluminum and poor iron. 

Rocks from the maria are classified as basalts because they are crystalline, igneous lava rocks (texture) consisting mainly of pyroxene and plagioclase (mineralogy).  Specifically, they are called mare basalts because they formed when magmas from inside the Moon erupted (petrology) into the basins formed by the impacts of small asteroids or comets early in lunar history to form the maria.  Mare basalts are subclassified by chemical composition (chemistry), for example, “low-titanium (Ti) mare basalt.”  Mare basalts are rich in iron because they contain pyroxene, olivine, and ilmenite, all of which are iron-rich minerals, and the amount of pyroxene + olivine + ilmenite exceeds the amount of iron-poor plagioclase.  

NWA 2995 is a fragmental breccia (2-mm grid in background). Note that in this and other brecciated lunar meteorites, the clasts are not particularly colorful. The "gray-scale" nature of brecciated lunar meteorites distinguishes them from many terrestrial sedimentary rocks (e.g., meteorwrong no. 124) which are reddish because they contain ferric iron (hematite). Lunar meteorites from hot deserts are sometimes more colorful than lunar meteorites from Antarctica because the hot-desert meteorites have suffered a greater degree of chemical alteration from interaction with liquids since landing on Earth. Many lunar meteorites from Oman (e.g., Dhofar 303 and paired stones) are pinkish as a result of terrestrial alteration (hematite staining).

Breccias Breccias are rocks made up of bits and pieces of other rocks (clasts) in a matrix of finer-grained rock fragments, glass, or crystallized melt. Monomict breccia is a term applied to a breccia that is made up entirely one kind of rock. Monomict breccias are rare on the Moon because meteoroid impacts tend to mix different kinds of rocks. Dimict breccias or dilithologic breccias are made up of only two lithologies. The term is usually applied to a common type of rock collected on the Apollo 16 mission that consists of anorthosite (light color) and mafic (dark, iron rich) crystallized impact melt in a mutually intrusive textural relationship. SaU 169 could be regarded as a dilithologic breccia. Polymict breccia is a general term that encompasses all breccias that aren't either monomict or dimict. Types of polymict breccias are glassy melt breccias, impact-melt breccias, granulitic breccias, regolith breccias, and fragmental breccias. Each of these breccia types has a different texture because the set of conditions that formed them differed. An impact-melt breccia can be regarded as in igneous rock because it formed from the cooling of a melt. Regolith and fragmental breccias are the closest lunar equivalents to terrestrial sedimentary rocks. Granulitic breccias are metamorphic rocks in that they were some other type of breccia that was metamorphosed (recrystallized) by the heat of an impact. Most brecciated lunar meteorites are regolith breccias. Some kinds of terrestrial rocks strongly resemble lunar regolith breccias (e.g., meteorwrong no. 118).

Igneous anorthosites are rare in the lunar highlands. Impacts of asteroidal meteorites on the Moon both break rocks of the lunar crust apart and glue them back together.  Most rocks from the highlands are breccias (pronounced brech'-chee-uz), a textural term for a rock that is composed of fragments of other rocks and that is held together by shock compaction or by material that was partially or totally molten.  An impact can melt rock, forming impact melt.  The melt usually collects rock fragments called clasts as it is forced away from the point of impact within a crater.  When the melt cools, it forms an impact-melt breccia — clasts suspended in a matrix of solidified (glass or crystalline) impact melt. 

The lunar surface is covered with fine-grained material called soil or regolith.  The shock wave associated with an impact can lithify the regolith — it can turn the fine, powdery material into a coherent rock called a regolith breccia.  At depth, coarser fragments can be lithified to form a fragmental breccia.  Breccia is a textural term that applies to rocks of both the maria and highlands.  Most lunar meteorites are feldspathic regolith breccias, that is, rocks consisting of lithified soil from the lunar highlands. Most highlands rocks are breccias because the highlands crust is very old and the impact rate was greater in early lunar history than during the time since the magmas forming mare basalts erupted.

The concentration of iron or aluminum serves as a useful chemical classification system in lunar rocks.  Lunar meteorites that are mare basalts (e.g., NWA 032) or breccias composed mainly of mare material (EET 87521/96008) are poor in aluminum and rich in iron.  In contrast, meteorites from the feldspathic highlands are rich in aluminum and poor in iron.  Glass spherules and basalt fragments from the maria have been found as clasts in most of the highlands meteorites, and some (e.g., Yamato 791197) contain a higher proportion of mare material than others.  Such meteorites plot on the high-iron end of the range of highlands (feldspathic) lunar meteorites.  Some “mingled” lunar meteorites (e.g., QUE 94281) apparently derive from a boundary between the maria and the highlands because they are breccias consisting of clasts of both mare and highlands rocks.  (All regolith samples from the Apollo 15 and 17 missions are mixed in this way.)  Such meteorites have intermediate concentrations of iron and aluminum.  We might expect, as more lunar meteorites are found, that the gaps in the aluminum-iron plot above will be filled in.  

More Detail:   See “Chemical Classification of Lunar Meteorites”

Why Are Lunar Meteorites Important?

It may seem, considering that 382 kg of well-documented rock and soil samples were obtained from nine locations by the Apollo and Luna missions, that a few small rocks from unknown points on the lunar surface cannot be very important.  For several reasons, however, the lunar meteorites have provided new and useful information.

The Apollo missions all landed in a small area on the lunar nearside, and some of those missions were deliberately sent to sites known to be geologically “interesting,” but atypical of the Moon. (On Earth, Yellowstone National Park is geologically "interesting, but hardly typical.)  The gamma-ray and neutron spectrometers on the Lunar Prospector mission (1998—1999) have shown that all of the Apollo sites were in or near a unique and anomalously radioactive “hot spot” on the lunar nearside in the vicinity of Mare Imbrium.  This existence of this hot spot, sometimes known as the Procellarum KREEP Terrane or PKT, indicates that the mare-highlands distinction of the ancient astronomers is not adequate in a geochemical sense.  Many rocks collected on the Apollo missions that likely originated from the PKT (especially those from Apollos 12, 14, and 15) are neither mare basalts nor feldspathic breccias.  They are rocks (usually impact-melt breccias) of intermediate FeO concentration (~10%) with high concentrations of the naturally occurring radioactive elements: K (potassium), Th (thorium), and U (uranium). Such rocks are often called “KREEP” because, in addition to K, they have high concentrations of other elements that geochemists call incompatible elements such as the rare-earth elements (REE, like lanthanum and cerium) and phosphorus (P).  Lunar meteorite, Sayh al Uhaymir 169 with a whopping 30 ppm Th, is a “KREEPy” meteorite.  Almost certainly, it derives from the PKT. Other meteorites that have moderately high concentrations of Th, like NWA 4472/4485 may also have originated from in or near the PKT. Most of the rest of the lunar meteorites appear to have come from outside the PKT because they have low concentrations, typically <1 ppm, of Th.  This distribution is reasonable in that we believe that the lunar meteorites are rocks from random locations on the lunar surface, and most locations on the lunar surface are not high in radioactivity.

The map on the top part of the diagram shows the distribution of the concentration of thorium (Th, in parts per million), a naturally occurring radioactive element, on the lunar surface as determined by the gamma-ray spectrometer on Lunar Prospector, which orbited the Moon in 1998 and 1999 (Lawrence et al., 2000 and Gillis et al., 2004). The center of the map shows the nearside and the left and right edges show the far side of the Moon.  The locations of the six Apollo (A) and three Russian Luna (L) landing sites are indicated (all on the nearside). The bottom part of the diagram shows the concentrations of Th in lunar meteorite source craters. (This means, for example, that the LAP meteorite and the NWA 032/479 meteorite count as 1 source crater because both meteorites likely came from a single crater.) Most lunar meteorites have low Th concentrations but a few have high concentrations (see last column of the List).  The figure shows that (1) the Apollo missions all landed in or near a region of the Moon with anomalously high radioactivity (the anomaly was not known at the time of Apollo site selection) and (2) most of the lunar meteorites must come from areas of the Moon that are distant from the nearside “hot spot” because they have low Th.  Thus, one of the values of the lunar meteorites is that they are samples from places on the Moon that are more typical of the lunar surface (low radioactivity) than the Apollo samples. The histogram on the bottom assumes that the known lunar meteorites derive from 39 source craters. The impact-melt breccia of SaU 169 plots off scale at 30 ppm; the bar at 9.8 ppm Th represents the regolith-breccia lithology. The figure is an updated (July, 2007) version of Figure 5 of Korotev et al. (2003).

Also, most of the lunar meteorites are breccias composed of fine material from near the surface of the Moon. This fine-grained material has been mixed by many impacts.  As a consequence, the composition and mineralogy of a brecciated lunar meteorite is likely to be more representative of the region from which it came than any single unbrecciated (igneous) rock from the same region. 

We know that over much of the Moon, and most of the far side, the material of the lunar surface has only 3—6% FeO because it is highly feldspathic:

Map of the surface concentration of iron (expressed as FeO) on the lunar nearside (left) and far side (right), based on spectral reflectance measurements taken by the Clementine mission in 1994.  The FeO data, from 70°S to 70°N, overlays a shaded relief map.  High-FeO areas occur where volcanic lavas (mare basalts) filled giant impact craters.  Low-FeO areas correspond to the feldspathic highlands.  Image courtesy of Jeff Gillis.

Most of the lunar meteorites have 3—6% FeO, thus these meteorites are entirely consistent with derivation from typical feldspathic highlands: 

These diagrams compare the distribution of the concentration of iron, expressed as % FeO, in the lunar meteorites (top) with the lunar surface as measured with the gamma-ray spectrometer on Lunar Prospector (middle) and estimated from spectral reflectance measurements taken by the Clementine (bottom).  Because the distributions have the same shape and because the peak occurs at the same concentration, we can reasonably infer that the lunar meteorites are random samples from the surface of the Moon.  The large peak at ~5% FeO corresponds to far side highlands and the small peak at ~17% FeO corresponds to nearside maria (see map).  For a more thorough discussion, see Korotev et al (2003).  Clementine data are from Lucey et al. ( 2000) and the Lunar prospector data are from Lawrence et al. (2002) and Gillis et al. (2004).

These various factors lead to the ironic circumstance that the feldspathic lunar meteorites (“feldspathic” breccias in the List) together provide us with a better estimate of the composition and mineralogy of the typical highlands surface than we were able to obtain from the Apollo samples.

The lunar meteorites have also provided us with crystalline mare basalts that are different from any collected on the Apollo and Russian Luna missions. In particular, the Northwest Africa 773 stones are different from any rock in the Apollo collection (e.g., Jolliff et al., 2003).

Prepared by: Randy L. Korotev    Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences Washington University in St. Louis    Please don't contact me about the meteorite you think you've found until you read this and this. e-mail: korotev@wustl.edu Last revised:  17-Mar-2008

July 25-31, 2004

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