[meteorite-list] Re: Barringer Meteor $$$$

From: Steve Schoner <steve_schoner_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:25:38 2004
Message-ID: <20030510150536.73433.qmail_at_web12708.mail.yahoo.com>

--- walter branch <branchw_at_bellsouth.net> wrote:
> Hello Everyone,
>
> Am I to understand that there is no recovery work
> being done to collect the remaining meteor crater
> specimens?
> Even by the Barringer family?
>
> -Walter
> ---------------------------------------------
> www.branchmeteorites.com
>
>
>

Right,

No recovery work is being done.

My project, and perhaps one since were the last ever
considered.

They are not interested in having meteorites removed,
or... ?

I wonder where all those really nice specimens in a
rock shop just east of Holbrook are coming from? Not
from an "official" meteorite dealer. In asking I got
evasive answers and I got the impression that it was a
person that only sold Canyon Diablo meteorites.
Beautiful specimens with weights of grams to 30 lbs!
All recently dug.

By whom?

But anyway,
 
The broad aims of my project were these.

1) Collect 20 meteorites of size 1 lb or larger from
twenty selected sections situated around the crater.

2) Each specimen will be located exactly on the
surface with a plane table or GPS.

3) Each specimen will then be numbered or bagged at
the site with the location numbers, then cataloged.

4) Each specimen will be reported to UCLA's Dr. John
Wasson, and ASU. And then sent to UCLA, for the
research.

The Goals of the project were:

1) Find any or all correlations between the specimens
found around the crater.

2) Ascertain whether the Type III irons noted by
Nininger were distributed around the crater evenly and
not just in one sector as he noted.

3) Examine all large oxide fragments to determine if
any of these are related to the famous Winona
meteorite. Dr. Wasson and I thought that there is a
relationship between the Canyon Diablo impactor and
Winona.

4) Steve Schoner would be compensated for transporting
the specimens to UCLA at a rate of $20 to $40 per/lb.

(This amount did not cover the wear and tear costs to
my vehicles, and when doing work at Buffalo Range the
task took a terrible toll on my VW rabbit which was
not up to a 30 mile trip on some very rough off road
situations--- the car was badly damaged on several of
the trips. I had protested that I would have to take
that Buffalo Range road all the way than take really
rough rocky roads to get to the sites I was authorized
to search. I had repeatedly asked if I could travel
down Chavez Pass and then take much better maintained
roads to the edge of Canyon Diablo then walk the
distance of a mile or so to Buffalo Range. This would
have involved permission from MCE-- they refused,
because the permit which they were considering [they
had already, already made up their minds to refuse it]
had not been approved)

The problem with the project beyond the wear and tear
of my vehicles, was that the intial place to search
was very far from the rim. I wanted to be 3 to 4
miles away, not 5 to 7 as was the case with Buffalo
Range areas. And the area that I searched was not
noted for producing any Canyond Diablo's of size. The
Holsinger map revealed that the places that I was
searching were virtually devoid of reported meteorites
in 1909. But I did find some about 1,700 grams
scattered in very small fragments across the plains
there. Like shrapnel. And that was very surprising
to me as at that distance, I wondered how such small
pieces could have traveled there. I showed them to
Dr. Shoemaker and Roddy at USGS, some time before
sending them to UCLA, and they too were amazed. But
the small pieces were indicators that something had
happened to scatter these so far from the crater rim
and the also gave me some imput on my searching
technique and also provided experience in catloging as
well as using the GPS, making 4 point measuremenets to
get exact locations of each find.

Steve Schoner
http://www.geocities.com/meteorite_identification

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Received on Sat 10 May 2003 11:05:36 AM PDT