Spaceflight Now: Breaking News

Seven meteorites added to new online map
ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY NEWS RELEASE
Posted: September 25, 2000

  Kring
David Kring in Tamaulipas, Mexico, hunting impact debris from the Chicxulub meteor crater. Photo: Carlos Urcuyo
 
Arizona is experiencing a mini-boom in meteorite recoveries, and you now can view a web-based map that shows where the meteorites hit, what they look like and how they're classified.

The clickable map at http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/SIC/arizona_meteorites/ was created by David A. Kring, students Jake Bailey and Ross Beyer, and photographer Maria Schuchardt at the University of Arizona Space Imagery Center.

Kring is director of the Meteorite Recovery Program and new director of the Space Imagery Center at the UA Lunar and Planetary Lab.

Scientists know of 39 meteorites found in Arizona during the past 110 years. About a third of these have been found in the past decade. Seven of those were identified in the past year by the UA Meteorite Recovery Program (MRP). MRP scientists also identified four others that fell outside of Arizona.

The seven new Arizona meteorites are listed in this month's Meteoritical Bulletin. They are named Coyote Mountains, Dos Cabezas, Fish Canyon, Golden Rule, King Tut, Ragged Top and Wildcat Peak.

It's no coincidence that more Arizona meteorites are turning up, Kring says.

"It's simply a matter of explaining to people what to look for," he notes. "We have been making an effort to go out and talk to groups who are likely to find these things, like Arizona gold prospecting clubs, and explain what to look for.

"Plus, media coverage publicizing the finds is generating more searches," he adds.

Kring says the university meteorite recovery team finds one or two meteorites in about every 600 samples submitted for study.

To check if your suspect meteorite might be the real thing, look at the series of tips listed in Kring's on-line booklet, "Meteorites and Their Properties," at http://meteorites.lpl.arizona.edu.

These tests will filter out 90 percent of the "meteor-wrongs," Kring notes. If the sample passes these tests, it's time to get an expert opinion. The public can contact meteorite experts through the UA Mineral Museum at Flandrau Science Center, the UA Lunar and Planetary Lab, and Arizona State University's Center for Meteorite Studies.

The four non-Arizona meteorites recovered by the UA team during the past year are one from Roosevelt County, New Mexico, and three from Saudi Arabia.