The Los Angeles Meteorite - to say that it changed my life would be an understatement. With each passing year, more and more of my time is devoted to meteorites. Not just an obsession with regards to finding more of the Los Angeles Meteorite, or even other Mars or Lunar meteorites, but all meteorites in general.

This is a LINK to my Los Angeles Meteorite web page.

Early on, as my initial efforts at finding more of the Los Angeles Meteorite continually panned-out, I discovered that I had a talent for finding small and very weathered, ordinary chondritic stone meteorites. I found that I had an above average ability to spot even the most terrestrialized of these kinds of stones. Regardless of whether the desert surface was rocky, sandy, or hard pan, I could still pick out the chondrite from among the gravel. In time my focus shifted towards recovery of these kinds of meteorites, exclusively.

This is a link to my web page which describes some of my latest efforts and Past Accomplishments

Compared to Martian and Lunar meteorites, rocks which researchers are the most interested, the kind of chondritic stones that I was finding were the LEAST interesting to those same scientists. That's because the meteorites that I was finding were "equilibrated and very terrestrialized". This phrase means that the rocks I was finding were the least pristine of all the meteorites that originated from asteroids in our solar system. But even if their petrology was the least interesting, their true value lay in how and where they were found on the ground. And not just their strewn field data, because the longer these stones lay on the ground, the greater the opportunity that natural forces will TRANSPORT them. Some of the chondritic stones that I found have been tested and are in excess of 9,000 years in terrestrial residence age. Their weathering and the conditions of the area where they were found, tells us a geological story about the Earth over those thousands of years. The very weathering that obscured what these stone could have told us about the origins of our solar system, has now become these meteorites "saving grace".

This is a link to some of the weathered, chondritic stone California Meteorites found in Desert Accumulation Areas and Stranding Surfaces.

Researchers who have studied those Martian and Lunar meteorites, that are lacking in strewn field data, don't consider this a detriment to their studies, or that it diminishes the meteorite in any way. The added value of strewn field data to their study of THOSE meteorites is MINIMAL, because the prime objective of this data is to deduce the parent body. But in this case the parent body is already known! The "added value" of strewn field data to the study of "equilibrated and very terrestrialized" Ordinary Chondrites is correspondingly much greater. And for a strewn field with a high TKW, the value of the location data for any particular stone could actually exceed its value as a collectible.

This is a LINK to my Meteorite Recovery Lab web site.

In some cases strewn field data has been compromised by natural forces, such as erosion, by wind or by moving water. The greater the terrestrial age of a meteorite, the greater the chance that it has been transported by these natural forces. I have found evidence that these forces of nature can result in meteorites being accumulated in certain preferred areas, or in other cases, being concentrated in situ. The "very terrestrialized" meteorites are the most likely to have been concentrated over the longest time, or have been transported the longest distance. It is these stones that have the greatest terrestrial geological interest to me. In addition to telling us something about their distant parent bodies, these "very terrestrialized" meteorites ALSO tell us about certain geological processes over the Earth's past several thousand year history. This is why I consider it an important enough reason to devote all my spare time to the recovery of these stones. And to "save" them from their eventual decomposition.

 
 

Meteorite Recovery Lab 

For more information regarding M.R.L. - Contact: Robert Verish - bolidechaser@yahoo.com 

Another function of Meteorite-Recovery is to "recognize" a new meteorite from previously found ones residing in existing meteorite collections. This is a link to one of my web pages for some of these "recognized" meteorites from GOLD BASIN AREA, ARIZONA This is a link to an ARCHIVE of all my old "Bolide*chaser Strewn Field" web pages.
since October 1999.
Home Page Maintenance by Robert Verish

Last Updated: December 12, 2012