MexicoDoug
4/9/2016 1:48:34 AM |
Perry (1950) and Hey (1951) have an account of how two more stones appeared privately in 1909 in a mineral enthusiast's estate and his nephew inherited them...and apparently the nephew was discovered along with the claim of a "found history" for the fall... Sounds that it fell on a farmer's place perhaps during a thunderstorm, who brought it to a local official, then somehow the local official got another stone and in time gave them to the enthusiast whose estate was mentioned. 100 year old stories like these that principally introduce names into th4e history of a meteorite need to be critically evaluated, though so we'd need to see the paper to decide for ourselves. I haven't read them, but I saw the info on the locality town's website which seems to have transferred the story from a well-known Venetian collector's site, who in turn has a copy of Stuart (1950) he read. |
Graham Macleod
4/8/2016 7:48:32 PM |
Nice to see this meteorite for the first time Paul!
Nice rich grain and cool matrix. |
MexicoDoug
4/8/2016 12:57:51 PM |
Wow, about as fresh as the day it fell displaying a an attractively bright, fine grained matrix. The account of the fall seems lost although it was reported to have been at 1PM. The source of the material was Professor Gaetano Giorgio Gemmellaro in Palermo, the capital of Sicily. Gemmellaro was doing field studies in the Canary Islands for the British when he learned of Sicily's 1860 invasion by those seeking to unify Italy. He rushed home to participate in the successful fight, and in exchange for his support was named the first professor of geology at the Univerity of Palermo. He did not have first hand knowledge of the fall but in establishing the university's first museum of geology had obtained the meteorite. After inquiring locally 15-20 years after the fall he was reported to say no direct witnesses could be located to describe the circumstances of the fall which he then realized was probably a shower rather than a single stone. |
Anne Black
4/8/2016 12:41:29 PM |
Nice rock, Paul. One you don't see very often. |
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