[meteorite-list] No Dogs Allowed

From: bernd.pauli_at_paulinet.de <bernd.pauli_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue Nov 2 07:28:46 2004
Message-ID: <DIIE.0000003D00002B98_at_paulinet.de>

Hello List,

Kevin sent a message to the List, which obviously didn't
go through and so he asked me to forward it for him:


As mentioned on this list today, another Mars meteorite, a nakhlite,
was recovered in Antarctica recently. Emily Stone, a correspondent
for the "Antarctic Sun" reported on the find, mentioning Nakhla, and
a dead dog.
Of course, this dog gone tale, as veteran readers of this list know, and
as detailed in an article in "Meteorite" back when it still had a "!", is
unsupported by evidence.
More telling, no person clinging to the legend has published anything in
its support in the last five years. Certain ridicule is a powerful restraint.
Perhaps dogs dead since 1911are like weapons of mass destruction.
We just haven't found them yet.
In the case of the Antarctic Sun, the fallibility of the Press is again apparent.
Maybe sweet Emily wanted to add a little sugar to her story for "human interest,"
because to her, the discovery of a new nakhlite wasn't enough. Maybe this was
the same motivation for creating the dog story in 1911 by the El Ahali neighborhood
newsletter. A little sugar.
A thorough examination of the petrology and history of Egypt's most famous fall is
a keystroke away, embedded in the Nakhla page at Dave Weir's gift to us all, his
excellent website www.meteoritestudies.com. The last page will fulfill your curiosity
on canine affairs.
This afternoon I wrote the Antarctic Sun, copying them on the particulars of this dog
boner, and I quickly received a reply from the paper's Brian Barnett.
"Yes, it's likely there was no dead dog."
It's really that simple.
And as Dr. John Ball, a scientist who researched the claim at the strewn field in 1911
stated, "The statement in the newspaper that one of the stones fell on a dog at Denshal,
"leaving it like ashes in a moment," is doubtless the product of a lively imagination."

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Kevin Kichinka

To: Meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com
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Received on Tue 02 Nov 2004 07:28:43 AM PST