Martian Meteorite News Archive 2/2007

September 17, 2007: Two new martian meteorites from Northwest Africa have just been approved by the NomCom of the Meteoritical Society, and published in the The Meteoritical Bulletin Database:

Northwest Africa 4480 - b-SHE - TKW 13g

The small ellipsoidal, fusion crusted stone was found in Algeria, and subsequently purchased by Greg Hupé in Tagounite, Morocco in September 2006. An abstract on NWA 4480 (pdf-file) has been published at the 70th Annual Meeting of the Meteoritical Society in Tucson by A. Irving et al. in August 2007, showing that NWA 4480 represents an unusual basaltic shergottite related to the "lherzolitic" shergottites.

Northwest Africa 4527 - o-SHE - TKW 10.06g

Two small stones without fusion crust were purchased by Greg Hupe in M'Hamid, Morocco in July 2006. They belong to the olivine-orthopyroxene-phyric group of shergottites, but they are most probably not paired to any of the previous martian meteorite finds from NWA, based on the distinct mineral compositions that have determined by the classifying scientists.

August 31, 2007: A new martian meteorite find from the ANSMET/NASA field season 2006 has been reported in Vol. 30, No. 2 of the Antarctic Meteorite Newsletter:

Larkman Nunatak 06319 - o-SHE - TKW 78.572g

The partially fusion crusted, fine-grained stone belongs to the group of olivine-phyric shergottites, and the first thin section pictures show a rather typical porphyritic texture. More detailed info, and basic petrographic descriptions can be found on the LAR 06319 page of the Antarctic Meteorite Newsletter, Vol 30(2), August 2007. >> older archive entries >>