A Preliminary Report on the Lucerne Valley, San Berna[r]dino County, California, Aerolites (CN 1169,345) -

- - - a photocopy of the report as it appears in "Meteoritics, 1964, 2, p.177, Meteor. Bull., 1964 (29)"
by RONALD N. HARTMAN and RONALD A. ORITI. - - -

This initial report leaned towards the "plurality of falls" theory. This is known as the "discovery article" for what would be formally named later as the "Lucerne Valley" Meteorites. Unfortunately, the concept of "multiple falls" and "overlapping strewn-fields" was not in vogue at that time, and all of these chondritic stones were ASSUMED to be the same meteorite. It would take 30 more years until it was recognized that these 7 original finds actually represented 4 distinct meteorite falls. As of year 2011 there have been more than 120 meteorite finds reported from Lucerne Valley! (Pairing studies are on-going.)

The image below is an enlargement of the above article. Cracks in the dried mud are only a small percentage of the total surface area. The "Catalogue of Meteorites" continues to give credit for this article to J.D. Buddhue, but as can be clearly seen, the authors are RONALD N. HARTMAN and RONALD A. ORITI, and proper credit should be given to them.

since April 26, 1999.
Home Page Maintenance by Bolide*chaser