The Field Museum received a high-quality meteorite from a fireball that exploded over California and Nevada last month. The 4.6-billion-year-old meteorite, donated by private collector and C&R Committee Member Terry Boudreaux, is extremely rare and valuable to science. It weighs about one-third of an ounce (10 grams) and has been tentatively classified as carbonaceous chondrite. Robert A. Pritzker Assistant Curator of Meteoritics and Polar Studies Dr. Philipp R. Heck (Geology) is member of the international research consortium that studies this meteorite. He collaborates with scientists at the Open University in the UK and Washington University in St. Louis to study the isotopic composition of the meteorite. Philipp also uses the facilities at the Field Museum to study this special meteorite.
This significant donation was featured on several local news media, such as WBEZ, ABC 7 Chicago, WTTW, Chicago Sun Times, and Chicago Tribune, and Physical Geology Collections Manager appear on WTTW's Chicago Tonight.
Photos below by Karen Bean, Field Museum.
