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73 pounds.   Iron, IVA

TKW 26 metric tons. Fall not observed. Found 1836 in Great Namaqualand, Namibia. The fragments of the meteorite in the strewn field are dispersed over an elliptical area 275 km long and 100 km wide.




     

Steve writes:

Everyone is familiar with the Gibeon meteorite, so in an uncharacteristic fashion, I won’t belabor this post with general descriptions. (But if you do want a bit of history, I included some in my prior post here.)

This 73 pound individual is unusual in the way it oriented during its fall, forming two essentially flat parallel surfaces. It sits nicely on the larger and is quite stable. As a consequence, it would perform well as a natural anvil – a purpose seemingly suggested by marks on its smaller face (Photos 1 and 2). Alternately, with the smaller side down, it looks like a more traditional anvil (Photo 3), with similar gouge-like marks on its larger flat surface (Photo 4).

Photo 5 shows a distorted Widmanstätten pattern on an area of the bottom side that was sanded and etched before we got it. In Photo 6, rollover lips and flow lines further attest to the kinds of heating and aerodynamic forces it experienced during its fall (please note the three images in this montage are not to the same scale).

The history of this piece is not clear, as its known provenance only goes back a few years. We were able to acquire it just before being cut (see the test saw mark in Photo 3).

There are definitive examples of meteorites being used as anvils, such as the 1400 A.D. Elbogen meteorite and the famous Tucson Ring. And in Buchwald’s third book, he describes number 74 of the 81 Gibeon masses then recognized by the Geological Survey of Namibia as also having been used for that purpose in more contemporary times:

NO. 74, GIBEON

     According to Mr. C.G. Coetzee, the Windhoek Museum, this meteorite, of about 35 kg, was reported to the museum in 1959 when a certain garage owner in Windhoek died and left his estate. The meteorite had been in the family for many years and had served as an anvil. There were no particulars as to location or date of discovery, and, unfortunately, in 1974 the mass could not be located in the museum.

While there’s no way to determine whether today’s MPOD meteorite was ever actually used as an anvil, or if so by whom, it's still fun to think that maybe Nama tribespeople long ago fashioned tools or weapons on it using other Gibeon meteorite fragments as source material . . .