[meteorite-list] Ventura's Seaside Gemboree Features Los Angeles Meteorite

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:22:36 2004
Message-ID: <200306112147.OAA23022_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

Note: this event was held June 4-8, 2003.


http://www.insidevc.com/vcs/events/article/0,1375,VCS_158_2011186,00.html

Rock 'n' roll the place

Ventura's Seaside Gemboree will serve up
heaping helpings of space debris, fossils and, yes,
rocks that look like food

By Karen Lindell
Inside Ventura County
June 5, 2003

The Mars meteorites, dinosaur fossils and
termites encased in amber would be enough to
rock anyone's world.

But the real geological wonder at the Seaside
Gemboree gem and mineral show will be the "Rock
Feast": a dinner display with food shaped from
mineralogical material.

The rock-hard meal includes peas (jade), rice (sea
pearls), chocolate (petrified wood), carrots (sliced
cave calcite) and a turkey carved from a
poultry-colored stone.

Organizers of the inedible display proudly note
that although they did some tweaking to shape the
rocks, the colors are all natural.

Seaside Gemboree 2003 will serve up other
all-natural, rock-related exhibits, speaker
programs and items for sale today through Sunday
at Seaside Park in Ventura.

The national show and convention, sponsored by
the California and American Federations of
Mineralogical Societies, is for serious rockhounds
as well as people who don't know a fulgurite from
a meteorite. (For the record, a fulgurite is a tubular
structure created by a fusion of sand and lightning;
a meteorite is a piece of space matter that has
passed through the atmosphere and hit Earth.)

Gemboree's Web site, www.afms-cfmsgemshow.org, belies the
event's serious side. The flashy pages are jam-packed with
dizzying colors, pictures and screaming headlines that call
to mind the cover of a tabloid newspaper ("Close-up of a
MARTIAN METEORITE!" and "Get a Real Piece of Dino Bone!" are two
examples). No phrase escapes the exclamation-point treatment:
"Lectures! Faceter's Conference!"

Beyond the hype is a lineup of activities both educational
and entertaining.

Dinosaurs will be a big focus of the show. Items on display
at the Hall of Dinosaurs include a hadrosaur leg bone,
fossilized eggs, a life-size triceratops skeleton, and
the cast of a Tyrannosaurus rex skull.

On Friday and Sunday, L.A.-based paleontologist Marcus Eriksen
will give educational talks on "Digging for Dinosaurs."

A Dinosaur Discovery Pit offers the opportunity to dig for
dinosaur bones and microfossils ($2). Instead of wielding a
shovel, however, you'll be sifting through about 11/2 cups of
material that has been prefilled with dino bits and other fossil
fragments.

"Whatever people find will be real," said Michael Lawshe of
the San Fernando Valley-based Del Air Rockhounds Club, which is
hosting the event.

Finding dino remains in Ventura County is highly unlikely
because the area was underwater during the days of the dinosaurs,
but marine fossils are abundant. On Sunday, during a trip to a
local beach (site to be announced), participants will search for
fossilized whalebones.

"The fossils make some of the coolest paperweights you'll ever
have," said Lawshe.

Not everyone digs dinos or paleontology, so Gemboree offers
plenty for those interested in the aesthetic value of rocks and
minerals.

More than 50 vendors, in addition to peddling fossils and dinosaur
eggs, will sell amber, gems (both faceted and unfaceted), crystals
and jewelry from around the world.

Name a precious or semiprecious gemstone and you'll find a
necklace, ring, bracelet or other bauble made from it, everything
from amethyst, aquamarine and opal to jade, quartz and tourmaline.

Also available will be "wire wrapping" jewelry, made from gold and
silver wire bent into shapes.

Much of the weekend will be devoted to meteorites, and Saturday
has been designated "Space Rock Day."

Dale Lowdermilk, an astronomer and member of the Santa Barbara
Mineral and Gem Society, and Robert Verish, a rock collector who
once found a meteorite from Mars, will give a talk on space geology
and meteorites.

If you've got a box of boulders stashed in the garage, dust it off.
Lowdermilk and Verish will be inspecting people's rocks to
determine if they're meteorites or what they call "meteorwrongs."

"Meteorites fall all the time," Lowdermilk said, "but most are hard
to distinguish from ordinary rocks."

Verish should know: He found his space rock in the Mojave desert in
the 1970s but didn't realize it might be a meteorite until 20 years
later.

Verish's rock, named the Los Angeles Meteorite, will be on display
at the show. The rare rock is one of only two meteorites from Mars
found in the United States; 18 have been found worldwide.

In comparison, about 23,000 meteorites from "ordinary" space matter
have been found worldwide. The only meteorite discovered in Ventura
County was found on a Ventura beach in 1956, said Lowdermilk.

Meteorites can be worth "a lot or a little, depending on the rarity,"
said Lowdermilk. Lunar meteorites, for example, fetch thousands of
dollars per gram, while meteorites from asteroid material sell for
50 cents to $2 per gram.

Also on display at the show will be a replica of the Old Woman
Meteorite, so named because it was found near the Old Woman Mountains
in San Bernardino County. Weighing in at about 6,000 pounds, it's
the second biggest meteorite found in the United States.

Lowdermilk said he is "fascinated with the idea of not just looking
at something from space through a telescope but holding a piece of
it in my hand."

Meteorites, he said, "aren't just 'rocks.' They contain primitive
materials that might have been the seeds of life on Earth."

For those who aren't quite as awed as Lowdermilk by the scientific
aspect of stones and fossils, consider their artistic value,
summed up nicely in this excerpt from a poem, titled "Amber" by
Joan Abramson of the North Orange County Gem and Mineral Society:

"How could such sticky pitch produce / This stoneless artistry? /
No minerals from mines profuse / Formed this anomaly."

Only human hands, however, could form a stone-cold turkey and jade
peas.
Received on Wed 11 Jun 2003 05:47:33 PM PDT