#stony-iron

[earthstory]

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Beautiful pallasite meteorite slab - each of those crystals is the mineral olivine and they’re a couple cm across. When polished, they tend to let light right through them. The surrounding material is iron - remnant of an iron core in an asteroid that was shattered.

[sexonmadderall-blog]

one of my most prized possessions

[thebrainscoop]

Pallasites

I have fallen in love with the meteorites at The Field Museum, namely the pallasites. Pallasites are rare stony-iron meteorites, meaning they are made up of nearly equal parts meteoric irons and embedded silicates, resulting in what could be described as a cosmically designed mosaic of space magic.  Pallasites are historically some of the largest meteorites to be discovered on earth. There are two pictured here:  

The top two photographs show a portion of the Esquel pallasite - Found in 1951 in Chubut, Argentina.  It had a reported recovered weight of ~1,500 kg (3,300+ lbs), which would make it one of the largest pallasites ever found. Imagine 1.5 tons of space metal crashing into the surface of the earth! 

The bottom two images are of the Springwater pallasite - Found in 1931 in Saskatchewan, Canada, with a recovered weight of ~68 kg (150 lbs). 

Both of these fantastic specimens can be seen on the second floor of The Field Museum, across the hall from the Grainger Hall of Gems.