[meteorite-list] Tagish Lake

From: Mark <mafer_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2006 20:27:30 -0500
Message-ID: <002801c72568$59a5c0d0$02fea8c0_at_maf>

Thanks Sterling, that's pretty interesting how they logged things. Not very
CRMish (my minor is in anthro) and you can see the where even a paleo
background would have helped in recovery.

Hind sight is 20/20 and it's easy to critic what they did wrong and what
they lost, but these were people who should have put out more effort into
the organization and having someone who has done previous expeditions to
remote and isolated areas was located right in southern Alberta (and he's a
geologist as well as world class paleontologist) who could have easily
helped them with what they would need and what they should do. It's often
this way where one field will not bring in another field. Causes a lot of
loss to the world of science and history.

They were creative, but it almost appeared that interviewing was more
important early on than recovery. Since they had confirmed pieces and a
location, interviews become secondary information to fill in after the fact.
And then, when recovery did occur, it was makeshift (Aunt Jemima bottles)
and the diaries left a lot unsaid I'd say. And it was obvious that even
though time was critical, they didn't ask for more manpower from the
universities in western Canada (UBC has a great geology and archaeology
department, and there are two other universities in southern British
Columbia also).
It is often thus when governments are allowed to rush in on something, the
hush hush, mine mine mentality.

But thanks for the links, you've done great!

Mark Ferguson

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sterling K. Webb" <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net>
To: "Meteorite List" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Cc: "David Weir" <dgweir at earthlink.net>; "Michael Farmer"
<meteoriteguy at yahoo.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 21, 2006 7:16 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Tagish Lake


> Hi, List,
>
>
> Here is a narrative of the Canadian recovery
> effort in the form of personal logs or diaries by
> the searchers and finders:
> http://aquarid.physics.uwo.ca/~pbrown/Videos/recovery_article.htm
> It details everything that all the "recoverers"
> did and when. You can judge the recovery effort
> for yourself.
>
> The fireball was Jan, 18. The meteorites on Tagish
> Lake were found by Jim Brook on Jan. 25. He picked
> up 17, about 1 kilo total, and freezer-bagged them and
> put them in his freezer. He lives in the area (very few do)
> and was given the bags and asked to look out for possible
> meteorites. He found them while driving his pickup truck
> across the frozen lake. On Jan. 27, a blizzard covered
> the lake and the meteorites.
> Brook took the meteorites to the Yukon Geoscience
> Office in Whitehorse and they called in Peter Brown, who
> called in Alan Hildebrandt. They identified them right away
> and started lining up money. On Feb. 15-27, the first recovery
> expedition went to Tagish. They interviewed every witness
> and collected photos and videos of the fall. They couldn't
> find any meteorites on the lake.
>
> McCausland and Plotkin, of the U. of Western Ontario
> carried out the second expedition, April 6-May 10. With
> favorable weather conditions, this expedition found some
> 410 meteorite sites in a strewnfield approximately 16
> kilometers long by three kilometers wide, and managed
> to recover about 200 of these meteorites.
>
> That's a summary of the discovery. The URL contains
> a long and full personal account, each, by Brown,
> McCausland, and Plotkin in the URL given above. It
> is a very interesting meteorite story which I recommend
> as a good read. There's a lot to be learned from it.
>
>
> Log of the Recovery:
> Even though I stumbled across the Tagish Lake
> Recovery Log of every specimen while Googling,
> it was hard to find again. The original is a .doc file
> (for MSWord):
> http://meteoritics.org/Online%20Supplements/Hildebrand_online%20tables.doc
>
> Here's the Google cache, which is in HTML,
> which may be more accessible for some:
> http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:TuhAYNW3BYoJ:meteoritics.org/Online%2520Supplements/Hildebrand_online%2520tables.doc+HG-04+Not+a+meteorite+--+dung&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2
>
> This document has a complete record of every
> find, with remarks and description of each individual
> stone, and summarries of witness statements, also worth
> looking through.
>
> The incoming object was about 200,000 kilograms,
> 5 feet in diameter (if spherical), and it fragmented in a
> burst equal to 2000 to 3000 tons of TNT.
>
>
> Sterling K. Webb
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "David Weir" <dgweir at earthlink.net>
> To: "Michael Farmer" <meteoriteguy at yahoo.com>
> Cc: "Meteorite List" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
> Sent: Thursday, December 21, 2006 2:47 PM
> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Tagish Lake
>
>
>> But Michael, think of the potential value that the strewn field map may
>> provide us someday (I know I'm not smart enough to imagine it). Maybe
>> Richard and Roland could spell out for us the great importance of such a
>> map.
>>
>> David
>>
>>
>> Michael Farmer wrote:
>>> ... You can all forget about recovery of more
>>> Tagish Lake meteorites. The Canadians lost it all when
>>> they closed off the site to all but a few people, who
>>> took two months to make a neat little map of locations
>>> of pieces frozen into the ice, then lost them all when
>>> a fast thaw came along. Great job scientists, you lost
>>> 99% of the rarest meteorite fall on the planet because
>>> you wanted to keep it all secret and to yourselves....
>>
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>
>
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Received on Thu 21 Dec 2006 08:27:30 PM PST