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Re: Nuveo Mercurio B?
Dear Ed,
Thank you for your observation. I may have taken a few liberties with both
my grammar, and my opinions. Although "reasonable reasons" sounds
redundant, I felt that in the scientific context of my opinion, it
contrasts with what I believe are unreasonable reasons. These include
pairings of convenience, circumstance, and probability. These, in contrast
to chemical analysis, isotopic ratios, and trapped gases, among other more
scientific measures for pairing.
The chance that two unrelated, but very similar and exceedingly rare
specimens would both fall, and be found within a few kilometers of each
other seems astronomically small. Therefore, some people believe the two
"must" be related and thus paired. From a scientific standpoint, the
similarities of circumstance are not enough to make a pairing. Nor do I
find the confusion of having many Hughes 00x meteorites justification to
combine specimens.
Some dealers view the pairings as both an opportunity to sell two different
specimens, while others see it as confusion in marketing. This has
happened before with meteorites such as the Tucson Iron. Specimens have
been cut from the Carleton masses and sold as "Tucson" leading the buyer to
believe their specimen came from the Ring piece. Again, I would suggest
that there are both reasonable and unreasonable reasons for pairings. Is
the Tucson iron the ring only, or is it all the masses combined. What
about the Cape York? Does the specific mass the specimen came from need to
be identified when a specimen is sold, as it often is with this locality?
Another example of is with the Reid 013 Brachinite. As was pointed out in
an earlier post, this rare type of meteorite came from a rather common
locality. Had this specimen been an ordinary chondrite, few would of spent
the time to search for pairings. However, since brachinites are so rare,
two distinct specimens from one locality should cause most people to
question the individuality of the meteorites. Unfortunately, some people
involved had a vested interest in keeping the specimens separate and
distinct, reasons not founded in science but rather in profit.
I have had the pleasure of being the recipient of a dealer's good nature in
regard to uncertain pairings. In my case, I purchased an oriented iron
meteorite of suspect origin. The dealer felt the specimen was from a more
well-known, nearby locality. However, this specimen did come out of an
organized and documented collection with a good reputation. If it really
is from a lesser-known and distinct locality, the specimen would be a
wonderful new addition to my collection. If it turns out to be from the
more well-known locality (through pairing or bookkeeping error), it becomes
just another specimen from that locality added to the collection, albeit
oriented. Since the dealer felt he could not guarantee the origin of this
specific specimen, he sold it to me for less than even the price the
well-known locality would gather.
What happens if the opposite is true? What if several paired specimens are
analyzed many years after their discovery, and it is found that they are
different? One example is the Gao, Guenie, and meteorite X found in Upper
Volta. They were originally paired for unreasonable reasons, those of
convenience. However, there are some in the scientific community that feel
the three localities are really from the same parent body thus worthy of
pairing. Then what about Mt. Tazerzait and Baszkowka? Even though they
fell three years and thousands of kilometers apart, for some reasons, they
should be paired. Are these reasons reasonable or unreasonable? If it is
the time between the two falls that is the problem, that many of the
Antarctic pairings should be questioned due to the uncertainty of the fall
dates.
Maybe this is all a problem with our definitions. We might be caught up
with the numbers in relation to our way of measuring time and distance,
where in the "big picture," the parings really occur in space, not here on
earth. Perhaps someone in our community who has experience with the
Antarctic meteorite pairings could shed more light on this topic.
Martin Horejsi
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