[meteorite-list] Re: Iraq Meteorites?

From: Paul Heinrich <lenticulina1_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:10:06 2004
Message-ID: <20030409160315.90063.qmail_at_web21413.mail.yahoo.com>

magellon wrote:

>Greetings,
>With the fall of the Iraq, will this open new
>opportunities for collectors and sellers?
>Or is this an area that has little meteorite
activity?

It is likely a little premature to buy any airplane
tickets. At this time, there is law and order that
needs to be established and a lot of hurting and
hungry people that need to be taken care of.
Eventually tourism, including meteorite hunters
could be an important part of rebuilding the economy
of Iraq.

One big problem for both the local people and any
meteorite hunters will be the unexploded shells,
bombs, and mines that now litter the area. These
will make walking off of well traveled roads and
trails quite hazardous in many areas for a long time
to come. A person might make friends with the people
cleaning up all of these stuff, as they will the
people most likely to find meteorites in the near
future when they use metal detectors to clean up
the debris of war.

There should have been as much meteorite activity in
Iraq as in any other part of the world. There is one
landform that will need looking into. It is discussed
in:

"Umm al Binni lake, a possible Holocene impact
structure in the marshes of southern Iraq: Geological
evidence for its age, and implications for Bronze-age
Mesopotamia." by Sharad Master at:

http://atlas-conferences.com/cgi-bin/abstract/caiq-15

Also there is: "Meteor clue to end of Middle East
civilisations By Robert Matthews, Science
Correspondent" - (Filed: 04/11/2001) at:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/11/04/wmet04.xml

A picture is at:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2001/11/04/wmet04.jpeg

The person working on this landform is Dr Sharad
Master of the University of Witwatersrand,
Johannesburg, SA.

The reference for this feature is:

Master, S., 2001, A possible Holocene impact
structure in the Al ‘Amarah Marshes, near the
Tigris-Euphrates confluence, southern Iraq.
Meteoritics and Planetary Science, vol. 36,
no. 9, Supplement, p. A124.

Yours,

Paul
Baton Rouge, LA

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Received on Wed 09 Apr 2003 12:03:15 PM PDT