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Saharan locations, Met. Bull. No. 82

Hello list members,

these are times that can make your heart beat faster, if you think e.g.
of meteorites that are found in the Saharan desert, where more and more
exotic specimens, in terms of classification, are continuously recovered
now.

>From the latest pre-publication of the Meteoritical Bulletin No. 82
(July 1998) on the internet, intended to be finally published in the
"Meteoritics & Planetary Science" magazine, I just learned that another
1425 g lunar anorthositic breccia (Dar al Gani 400) has been found in
Libya less than 9 weeks ago. The main mass is stated to be with the
finder, who is not identified in the paper, as I can very well
understand from his point of view, but he, at least, lets the scientific
and other folks know the exact location of his precious find, which is,
mostly for the scientific side, much better than just letting us know
the "relative" coordinates (i.e. coordinates relative to an unknown,
confidential geographical point in longitude and latitude) for Saharan
finds. This seems to be practice, for other, well understandable
reasons, of a certain party of meteorite hunters.

My personal point with this is: who can resist e.g. buying a rare EH3 at
a good official price of USD 30/g from the original collectors? (PS: I
am afraid, and I must admit, I could not, for just a few grams!). Should
you resist doing it for that kind of information policy? Is it a
question of morality or is it just a question of making a good deal for
your collection, and what about the benefits for science, in the very
first place? May or will the collecting party not, at some time, tell
the rest of us the exact geographical locations, in a well saturated
situation for them, finally? (PS: I hope, they will really do!) 

Another problem, and possibly about to become serious: might other
collector parties in the Saharan desert not follow those same principles
of announcement policy (relativity in space!) of their finds in the
future? Will this in consequence not be a general threat for the
meteoritic community in a broader sense (and in a narrower sense for the
nomenclature committee), at least for the scientific part of us?
  
Well, just some thoughts from a private collector to possibly stimulate
a discussion...

Alexander  
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Alexander Seidel          N 53.5932  E 9.4683  6m asl
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