[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Mining for Meteorites - Part 6 of 12

KRAJICK KEVIN (1999) Mining for Meteorites (Smithsonian, March 1999, pp.
90 -100):

North of Tucson in the small town of Payson, I met the equally
remarkable Marvin Killgore. Craggy, calloused, cowboy-hatted and
sunburned, Killgore looks every bit the small-time gold prospector he
has been since childhood. Or was, until 1990, when a buyer told him he
could make more per ounce on a good meteorite. Killgore had no idea what
one even looked like, but he had an experienced eye, an appetite for
reading and a metal detector for finding buried nuggets. Many meteorites
are heavy with iron and nickel, so Killgore went at it full tilt and
quickly became one of the world's leading hunters. He now has a passport
as worn as Haag’s and a terrific collection. He sells 25 percent of his
finds and keeps the rest.
Killgore digs into any source that might hint at a fall, new or old,
however obliquely: anthropology texts, mining reports, the Internet,
conversations overheard in restaurants. "U.S. Geological Survey
publications have been very good to us," he says. He and his son,
Elijah, also passionate amateur astronomers, recently built themselves a
telescope the size of a howitzer so they can scan the night skies.
One summer day Marvin, Elijah and I bumped over a dirt road in northern
Arizona to a pasture called Clover Springs. Marvin had targeted this
locale from a 1940s handwritten report in the state university archives.
It indicated that somewhere was a boulder on which a cowboy had found a
fragment of a rare meteorite type called a mesosiderite. Nothing more
had ever been spotted. We spent the day humping up and down hills and
straggling through thorn brush. Marvin swung the detector pod like a
blind man’s cane, listening to signals through headphones. Every once in
a while he'd dig with a miniature garden rake and adroitly sift dirt
through his fingers. Pop-tops, tobacco cans, a horseshoe, a heavy chain
and a hell of a lot of bullets - but no meteorites. This did not spoil
his constantly sunny manner. "I never get tired of this. I can do this
12, 14 hours a day. I just like being outside," he drawled. "The only
thing that ticks me off is those people in Libya."
The kindly Killgore was not referring to the Libyans - they'd never done
him any harm - but to the fact that for the past two years, a
cloak-and-dagger consortium of private European hunters has been
scouring the Libyan Sahara for meteorites, with spectacular success. The
biggest find to emerge so far from there is a greenish 513-gram lunar
fragment, picked up in March 1997 and now filtering onto the
international market in pieces. The hunters deal secretly with museums,
shield their identities and keep their sites secret, lest anyone track
them. No Americans compete with them, since the U.S. government strongly
advises against visits to Libya. "I'm missing out on all that action,"
moaned Marvin.

----------
Archives located at:
http://www.meteoritecentral.com/list_best.html

For help, FAQ's and sub. info. visit:
http://www.meteoritecentral.com/mailing_list.html
----------