[meteorite-list] Richardton, New Leipzig Meteorites Coming to North Dakota Exhibit

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sun Jun 18 19:54:53 2006
Message-ID: <200606182352.QAA03550_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.minotdailynews.com/news/articles.asp?articleID=3572

Richardton meteorite specimens also coming to N.D. for exhibit
By ELOISE OGDEN
The Minot Daily News (North Dakota)
June 18, 2006

BISMARCK - Specimens of another meteorite, called the Richardton
meteorite, will also be coming to North Dakota for the new "Corridor of
Time" exhibit in the North Dakota Heritage Center in Bismarck.

The University of Minnesota is loaning two specimens of the Richardton
meteorite to the North Dakota Geological Survey and the State Historical
Society of North Dakota for the exhibit, said Ed Murphy, Bismarck, state
geologist and director of the N.D. Geological Survey.

The Richardton meteorite and the New Leipzig meteorite, the latter being
loaned by the Smithsonian Institute, are different types of meteorites.
The Richardton is a stony meteorite which is most common meteorite, and
the New Leipzig is an iron meteorite, Murphy said.

The Richardton meteorite has the notoriety of being the only meteorite
fall ever witnessed in North Dakota, Murphy said.

That meteorite fell in June 1918 near Richardton and was witnesses by
numerous farmers and others living in Mandan, Dickinson, Hettinger and
Lemmon, S.D., Murphy said. He said because the state geologist was out
of his office, a call about the meteorite went to T.T. Quirke, a
professor at the University of Minnesota who visited the site and bought
a number of the specimens from landowners for the mineralogy collection
at the University of Minnesota. In 1966, the University of Minnesota
loaned a dozen specimens of the meteorite to the Smithsonian Institute.

The Rev. Odo Muggli, of the Assumption Abbey in Richardton, has a piece
of the Richardton meteorite and keeps a file there about it. Two of his
uncles witnessed the falling meteorite and his father was a broker for
pieces of the meteorite that people found.

"This spring, we requested that the geology department at the University
of Minnesota retrieve two of those specimens (from the University of
Minnesota) and loan them to the State Historical Society of North
Dakota," Murphy said.

He said E. Calvin Alexander, professor of geology and curator of
meteorites at UM, and W.E. Seyfried Jr., department chair, readily
agreed and were enthusiastic about the opportunity to display the only
witnessed meteorite to fall in North Dakota in the state museum.

"This sounds like an exciting idea to me. The Richardton meteorite
shower has played a significant roll in meteorite science and it seems
singularly appropriate to have material from it on display at the N.D.
state museum," Alexander said.

The "Corridor of Time" exhibit will open this fall.

"The inclusion of meteorites into the 'Corridor of Time' exhibit enables
us to not only show people what meteorites look like, but also gives us
the opportunity to explain the theory of asteroid impact and dinosaur
extinction by discussing the differences and similarities between
meteorites and asteroids," Murphy said.

He said the N.D. Geological Survey has a publication on the meteorites
of North Dakota. "But there is no substitute to viewing these specimens
in three dimensions. Evidence for asteroid impact at the end of the
Cretaceous - when dinosaurs became extinct - has been discovered by
scientists working in southwestern North Dakota."
Received on Sun 18 Jun 2006 07:52:35 PM PDT