[meteorite-list] Canadians in the Prairies Can Help Find Meteorites

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon Jul 25 12:26:48 2005
Message-ID: <200507251559.j6PFx3P27783_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/July2005/25/c4177.html

Canadians in the Prairies can help find clues about the Solar System
Canada NewsWire Group
July 25, 2005

    LONGUEUIL, July 25 /CNW Telbec/ - Each of the past five summers, a field
campaign has been organized for the Prairie region to find and study new
meteorites. Tom Weedmark, a geology student from the University of Calgary, is
conducting the Prairie Meteorite Search this summer. Until the end of August,
he will visit towns in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba to present specimens
to interested people so they can learn about the key characteristics. So if
you think you have found a meteorite, bring it along to be identified.
    "Meteorite finds are important because they provide clues about the
history of our Solar System," says Dr. Alan Hildebrand, from the Department of
Geology and Geophysics at the University of Calgary. "Most meteorites are
fragments of asteroids formed at the birth of our solar system, and they
provide us with precious insights into its origins."
    As the second largest country in the world, Canada is a vast target for
meteorites. In the last five years, some 700 meteorites are estimated to have
fallen here. However, meteorites are still some of the scarcest material on
Earth, much more rare than gold. They are sought after by collectors and
researchers alike.
    Winnipeg-based rock collector Derek Erstelle is the only person in Canada
to have found two meteorites, the first in 1998 near Pinawa and the other in
2002 near Bernic Lake, in Manitoba. Finding more than one meteorite in the
same area may indicate that many were carried and left there by glaciers that
retreated from Western Canada at the end of the last Ice Age.
    "Derek found these where two lobes of the Laurentide ice sheet met about
11,500 years ago," says Dr. Hildebrand. "He may have located a meteorite
stranding surface where hundreds or thousands of meteorites were concentrated
by glacial flow and were dumped in a small area when the ice melted." Dr.
Hildebrand says this theory can be tested by determining how long the Bernic
Lake and Pinawa meteorites have been on Earth, and by searching for more
meteorites in the region near Pinawa.
    The annual summer Prairie Meteorite Search is led by Dr. Hildebrand of
the University of Calgary, Dr. Peter Brown of the University of Western
Ontario, and Dr. Martin Beech of Campion College at the University of Regina.
The three scientists are members of the Canadian Space Agency's Meteorites and
Impacts Advisory Committee (MIAC), Canada's volunteer group charged with the
investigation of fireballs and the recovery of meteorites. The Canadian Space
Agency is funding the project's field costs for the summer of 2005.

For further information: Prairie Meteorite Searcher Tom Weedmark:
(403) 852-5613; Dr. Alan Hildebrand, University of Calgary: (403) 220-2291,
http://www.geo.ucalgary.ca/PMSearch/ ; Nicholas Girard, Media Relations,
Canadian Space Agency, (450) 926-4370, E-mail: nicholas.girard_at_space.gc.ca
Received on Mon 25 Jul 2005 11:59:03 AM PDT