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See below.   Pallasite, PMG-an

TKW 700 kg. Fall not observed. Found 1749 in Krasnoyarskiy kray, Russia.


 

Holger writes:

The specimen on the blue background resides in Berlin. It is the 712 gram 'Klaproth' specimen (inventory number 1561), which, according to the inventory sheet has a partially natural surface. The other specimen is in Saint Petersburg in the Geological Prospection Museum. It weighs 206 grams and the reverse side of the specimen is partiall ypolished.

When first seen on a remote mountain ridge in central Siberia, in 1749, this block of metallic iron/nickel, mixed with olivine crystals, weighed almost 700 kg. The discovery was published in 1776 by Peter Simon Pallas, a German naturalist, who analyzed it, and concluded that it was of natural origin, i.e. excluding ancient smelting operations. By 1794, another German researcher, Ernst Florens Chladni, published his revolutionary theory that this block, along with many other enigmatic stone- or iron-masses, originated from Cosmos, and had fallen to the ground during a fireball phenomenon.

Over several operations the Pallas Iron was brought from the finding place (91.5 d East, 55 d North) to a village on the eastern bank of the river Jenisei, then to the city of Krasnoyarsk, on to Saint Petersburg, and finally to Moscow, where it rests in Fersman's Mineralogical Museum, sliced into two halves. Presumed samples exist in many museums around the world, but almost all lack any trace of the use of heavy hammers and chisels, stated to be the tools used to separate them. Could the have formed Imilac-wise?

The human figures are unrelated additions, probably made by a copper-engraver in Saint Petersburg, while preparing for publication of the third volume of Pallas' trilogy "Travel through various provinces of the Russian Empire", 1776.