Nevada Meteorite Picture of the Day

Discover the Solar System - right here in the Nevada desert! Each day a different image or photograph of a NEVADA meteorite will be featured, along with a brief explanation written by a meteorite-recovery expert.

2003 July 07
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Name of Nevada Meteorite: Primm - Actually, THIS is Nevada's 4th Meteorite Find
Credit: Image by Robert Verish, taken May 2000 at the residence of the finder Nick Gessler in Los Angeles, California.

Explanation: The 4th meteorite found in Nevada is the Primm Meteorite.
This particular specimen has fractured along a surface that appears to exhibit a feature called "slickenside", which is a term that geologists use to describe a polished and striated rock surface that results from friction along a fault plane. This is a feature that is much more commonly found in terrestrial rocks. Since this fracture surface isn't perfectly planar, there is another possibility that this is a "shattercone" feature, which would be evidence for a relict "cone-in-cone" structure that possibly formed during an impact on the parent body for the Primm meteorite. (Scale is in centimeters.)

Primm:

35º40'N 115º22'W
Clark County, Nevada, USA
Found 1997 December 23
Ordinary chondrite (H5)
104 meteorite fragments weighing a total of 3.383 kg were recovered by Nicholas Gessler after an extensive search of Roach Dry Lake. Many of the fragments could be fit together to form larger pieces. The largest individual fragments weighed 281, 202, 137, 122, 109, and 101 g. The strewn field measured approximately 1 by 2 miles.
Mineralogy and classification (A. Rubin, UCLA) olivine, Fa 18.5; shock stage, S2; weathering grade,W3.
Specimens type specimen, 27 g, UCLA; main mass, Gessler

Tomorrow's picture: Roach Dry Lake


For Reference:
To Report a New Nevada Meteorite: - use Meteoritical Society - Nomenclature Committee web form

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Authors & editors: Robert Verish (Meteorite-Recovery Lab)