[meteorite-list] Some thoughts on Larry Atkin's Recent Holbrook Find

From: JKGwilliam <h3chondrite_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2007 15:03:22 -0700
Message-ID: <6.2.1.2.0.20070212144659.01d0a560_at_pop.west.cox.net>

Bernd, Larry, Maria and List,
Here's some more "food for thought" concerning the Holbrook strewnfield.

One of my best friends, Dave Andrews, lives in Holbrook and has hunted the
strewnfield hundreds of times. He was Larry and Maria when Larry made his
find of a lifetime. Dave and I talked on the phone while the three of them
were still out in the field, and Dave told me it was found in an area that
many of us had been over dozens of times.

How could that be?

Over the years, Dave has noted that wind and water erosion probably come
into play. After a good wind or rain storm, artifacts ( indian pottery
shards) and meteorites become exposed. They seem to "appear" in places
where they weren't just days before. In actuality, they were there all
along but were hidden below a thin layer of sand. Anyone who has ever
hunter there has noticed that there are small "hillocks" of sand mounded up
around the bases of some of the indigenous shrubs. My guess is that once
these shrubs die and are blown away by the winds (which can last for days
and reach speeds of 50 MPH and more) the sand moves on without the shrubs
there to hold it in place.

Several years ago, Dave, John Blennert and I were hunting in
Holbrook. While walking along with Dave, he bent over and picked up a
small complete stone of about 2 grams. It was perched atop a small column
of soil very much like a golf ball sitting on a tee. The soil (mostly
sand) around it had blown away leaving the small stone nearly half an inch
above the surrounding soil.

Best,

John Gwilliam
At 01:09 PM 2/12/2007, bernd.pauli at paulinet.de wrote:
>Hello Larry, Maria, and List,
>
>First of all, of course, sincere congratulations!
>
>"They came to the Southwest and did an amazing job, finding
> meteorites at Holbrook, Franconia and Gold Basin."
>
>.. which should remind us all of Bob Haag's famous words:
>
>"The key is to get out there and look for them."
>"Usually some pieces were missed in the initial search."
>
>But: "I had been within 50 feet of Larry's find many, many
> times and driven by it many more."
>
>.. which shows how difficult it can be, even for experienced
>meteorite hunters like Ruben Garcia.
>
>.. which should not discourage anyone willing to search the "strewnfield"
>again and again, even though Foote (no, not Gary ;-) remarked in his pre-
>liminary note on the Holbrook shower in 1912:
>
>"the field is now pretty well cleaned up."
>
>Hmm! If he had known what he didn't know then, ... he was wrong!
>
>Here is one of the "die-hard" observations from Foote's notes:
>
>"One piece larger than an orange fell into a tree in a yard at Aztec
>cutting the limb
> off slick and clean and falling to the ground, and when picked up was
> almost red-hot."
>
>"Von Achen, who saw them fall, reported that they were too hot to pick
> up. Two accounts state that they became lighter in color after cooling."
>
>According to Foote's notes, the ellipsoidal strewnfield extended
>west->east but one question
>has not yet been answered satisfactorily: Were the stones
>"indiscriminately spread over the
>ground", or were they found sorted according to size (and weight)? How do
>Larry's "find of
>a lifetime" and Maria's finds fit into this puzzle?
>
>Happy to own an 8.3-gram individual (label no. 331) purchased
>from the Zeitschels in 1987 and a 0.45-gram thin platelet,
>
>Bernd
>
>P.S.: Please, don't forget to include the Branch
> family in your thoughts and your prayers !
>
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Received on Mon 12 Feb 2007 05:03:22 PM PST