[meteorite-list] 5 reasons to record meteorite coordinates

From: Jason Utas <meteoritekid_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:44:43 -0800
Message-ID: <93aaac891003100544u49c9d69erf2de0c151747a837_at_mail.gmail.com>

Martin, All,

> Not that different from Antarctic meteorites, which have lost their original
> context by the transportation by the ice.
> Nevertheless they aren't considered useless and good sums of public money
> are spent to recover them.

Right, but you're comparing apples and oranges. Yes, they're still
valuable. No matter how many times I say it, you seem to find it
necessary to reiterate it.
But you're comparing meteorites from antarctica which are transported
naturally, resulting in the following facts:
1) There's nothing we can do scientifically to deduce where they fell.
 The ice has erased that information. Beyond knowing that they fell
somewhere 'upflow,' we know nothing about where they fell: we
couldn't.
2) Where they fell is in this case not as relevant. Because
glaciation collects meteorites from many places together into one
place, knowing where they fell wouldn't help you to find more. At the
same time, the scientists do keep track of where, on which ice field,
each meteorite was found. Hence we know that many Antarctic stones
are paired.

What we don't see is scientists simply assigning every Antarctic
meteorite a number independent of where it was found. They are still
given prefixes so that pairings may be assigned with some accuracy.
Apparently location, as much as it can be discerned, is still relevant
to them.

> I am glad, that we have NWAs - where would be in meteoritics, if we wouldn't
> have had them?

A bunch of meteorites sitting in the desert with determinable
coordinates waiting to be picked up.

You can always put off picking up a meteorite for a few hundred years,
and in most cases, not much will happen to it.

But once you pick it up and walk away without noting the find
location, there's just nothing you can do to get it back.


> In my opinion in that find context question
> one can't compare meteorites with vertebrate fossils or archaeological
> things.
> Because other than these object, a meteorite always offers information
> beyond and independently from its terrestrial history:

Fossils give us a biological and evolutionary history of life, which,
although it overlaps with Earth's geologic chronology, operates rather
independently. True, it's easier to date fossils based on geologic
continuity, but we don't inherently value fossils because of what they
tell us about the geologic processes that preserved and altered them;
we value fossils generally for what they tell us about what life
consisted of in eons past.
But knowing where a fossil was found is quite relevant to its
provenance, no? Even if you can date it without knowing where it was
found, and you can get the biological/evolutionary information out of
it, it's still a good thing to know where a fossil was found. How
else do you find more?
You're just making an arbitrary distinction between terrestrial and
extraterrestrial history. Arbitrary.

> It tells us stories from other celestial bodies and the solar system.

Fossils, life.

> And it does that even if it's only a fragment of a stone. If not too small,
> each meteoritic fragment is a pars pro toto of the whole fall.

Just as a complete fossil is a part of an ecological mosaic that we
will never wholly uncover, and each fragment of bone, a chip off of a
tile in that picture of the past.

> Different it is, if you have a fragment of a dino-bone or an artefact,
> With them the essential piece of information has to be gained from the find
> context.

Only because isotopic dating is much harder on earth. If you could
determine the age of such fossils independently, they would be
perfectly analogous to meteorites; they would be biologically
relevant, but without a geologic context, you simply wouldn't know
where to find more, and maybe find the rest of the fossilized
organism.

2008 TC3 is the perfect example - if nomads had gone out and found the
meteorites without noting coordinates, what would we know about the
fall? Well, if they brought the stones out as a new fall, we might
think them paired, especially after terrestrially dating the stones,
but the fact of the matter is that, assuming only a few stones were
recovered, we might get all ureilites, or all EH, or H. Knowing where
the stones were found and conducting an intensive search in the area
is the only reason that we have as comprehensive an idea of that
asteroid's composition as we do now, and that's a fact.

> And also the circumstances are somewhat different.
> If you find a fossil, you can ram your flag into the site, because you know,
> where one fossil was found, there are more. And as they were preserved in
> the soil for dozens of million years, you have all the time of the
> worrrrrrld to excavate the site.

And if you find a meteorite in a certain place and flag the location,
you might well find more of the same type nearby.
Different processes, same thing. There may be more fossils near the
one you found, and there might be more meteorites near the one you
found. But you have to know where they were both found to look for
more.

> Note also, what for efforts are undertaken, to excavate archaeological
> sites. There are some, where a professor's lifetime wasn't enough to do all
> the documentation.

The method is different, true - most meteorites don't require
excavation, but...some do.
And with fossils, you have examination - with meteorites we have
analysis. There are still many secrets contained in Orguiel and
Murchison - more than will be unravelled in my lifetime.
I see little difference.

> Such efforts do not exist in the World of meteorites.

We know everything to know about Semarkona, Ibitira, Kaidun, Orgueil,
and all meteorites?
No. Studies will continue to discover more information and to
interpret it correctly.
That's the real difference between studying fossils and meteorites.
Meteorites are a means of figuring out how things formed geologically.
 On earth, we've got that (geology) generally figured out, and we
study fossils to figure out how life formed evolutionarily. We know
enough about fossils, biology, etc., to know how things generally
worked, though. With meteorites, we know less about how things came
into existence and more about the chronology afterwards.
Kind of like how we are still trying to figure out how life first came
into existence, but we know how things generally worked after that.
Understanding phases of metamorphism generally isn't a problem.
Figuring out where Ureilites came from, on the other hand....not so
easy.

> Other than Jason, I don't think, that the very surfaces of the US-deserts
> and the dry lake beds remain absolutely unchanged for thousands and
> thousands of years.

The lakes around here dried up in the pleistocene about 15,000 years
ago. They've been periodically wet and dry in the meanwhile, but we
do know that some meteorites in the American Southwest (e.g. Gold
Basin) have been around for nearly 20,000 years. So while they might
not be unchanged, they're still here - at least some of them.

> And if once a stone disappeared in the ground, it's
> quite impossible to find it.

Hardly. Half of the meteorites being found out here are being found
by metal-detectorists, buried.
Of course, a lot of those have been found in known
strewnfields....which illustrates my point.
Franconia. One find. Can you imagine if the finder was not a
qualified meteorite hunter and did not record where he found it? The
loss? No Franconia on the market, no Sacramento Wash meteorites, no
Buck Mountain Wash meteorites, Palo Verde Mine, etc.
Same goes for Gold Basin and Hualapi Wash, White Elephant, Temple Bar, etc.
Knowing where one was found led to the discovery of thousands of
pieces of those meteorites - and to others in the area that would
never otherwise have been found.
Thanks to the fact that hunters in California recorded that meteorites
were found at Superior Valley, we also have an acapulcoite, and Rob
Matson's CK4 from Lucerne, as well as his E-chondrite from Roach Dry
Lake.
Having a strewnfield makes hunting more worthwhile; without it, you'd
have to be hoping to make that random cold find, which many people
aren't patient enough to do.

So, it took knowing where other meteorites were found to find those stones.


> See also Oman, where after each rain, new
> meteorites appear on the surface. And Sahara was once a green place - not so
> long ago, at least most of the NWAs, if I think about their average
> terrestrial ages, still had witnessed that period.

True.

> In non-desert regions, a meteorite will be covered by vegetation often in
> less than a year, after a couple of years it will be fully disappear in the
> humus layer.

Most likely.

> With fresh falls, it is in meteorite science consensus and state of art,
> that the specimens shall be recovered rather in hours than in days.
> Task forces to recover new falls (compare it btw. to the emergency
> excavation teams, if on a construction site an archaeological object is
> found) timely seem not to exist in most of the prohibitive countries.

Australia, yes, Canada...no teams, but scientists found Buzzard Coulee
and Grimsby pieces. Ummm...organized teams, I agree, are hard to come
by - but they typically do chase falls down one way or another. It's
not like hunters go out in organized teams, though, so I don't see why
you're saying we're better than the scientists.

> And in almost all cases, where a fireball promises to be a dropper, the
> essential field work to make it possible at all, that a stone might be
> recovered, is done by the private collectors.

No. Part of the reason why Whetstone was so amazing was because a
collector/hunter actually tracked it down without the find being made
by locals or radar information from scientists. It was the first time
that anyone has done that in many, many years. Private collectors
often recover stones, but the finding of the fall is typically done
due in large part to scientists, and not to us.

> That laws would help or would be necessary to preserve coordinates is in my
> opinion a spurious discussion.
> First of all, most desert meteorites and the most significant desert finds
> in USA, I guess, are found by experienced meteorite hunters, well knowing
> about the importance of find documentation.
> (In fact, as

And some aren't. Temple Bar was found somewhere near the Gold Basin
strewnfield...or something like that. Somewhere in northwest Arizona.
 But this is kind of a side-issue. You seem to be saying that most
hunters here are doing a good thing by documenting our finds. And I
would like to point out that if we didn't, we wouldn't find a fraction
of the stones that we actually do find.

> Secondly. (The DaG-meteorites were documented too)
> The Oman finds were perfectly documented by the private hunters from the
> beginning on. With in situ photos, GPS coordinates, description of the
> surrounding soil, day of find, number of pieces, exact weights and later
> complete classification, even some strewnfields were mapped and published
> and also many more scientists around the world were able to do research on
> the finds, as it is today the case with the "official" finds, as well as by
> far more of these specimens enrich the institutional collections around the
> world and are partially on public display, than the "official" ones
> ?- and many teams of these private hunters were led by professional and
> examined geologists.

And many more lunar and martian and rare meteorites were found because
of the documentation. Fact.

> Nevertheless the laws came and additionally with almost every opportunity it
> was agitated that existing laws should be better enforced to eliminate the
> successful finders and pioneers out.

Well, it's keeping some out. But you're talking about the application
of restrictive laws where hunters by and large already record relevant
information. I'm talking about doing what we can where that
information is being lost so that it might be preserved - and recorded
later.

> To break laws may be a peccadillo for Jason as an occasional spare time
> hunter,
> professional hunters and those, who generate the lion share of the annual
> World meteorite output can't work like that.

I don't know what you're saying here. If the laws state only that I
can hunt for meteorites, that they belong to the US government, and
that I cannot sell or trade my finds, then I have never broken one of
these laws.
But you seem to confuse this with the notion that the world meteorite
output would drop if all hunters were to do this as well. I agree
that there is no system in place for this to happen in NWA, but the
time and effort it would take to do so would be easily doable if the
hunters out there had the necessary equipment - and if we were to
prohibit them from hunting so that qualified people might go there an
hunt with GPS' and the like, well, yes, output would fall, but from a
scientific perspective, we would get more out of *it in the long run.*
 We would know where particular meteorites were found, and we would
have much more detailed strewnfield maps, and more pieces of the rare
meteorites than have been found. In the long run.

You have NEVER addressed this idea, and always say the same thing in
response to this issue and I'm getting fed up with your dancing around
the point.

Jason


>
>
>
>
> PS.
> And in general, we should abstain from iterate from these myths about
> profit. Can me anyone show a hunter, who became rich and wealthy in selling
> his US-desert finds?
> I don't know any, you?
>
> PSS: No laws at all have proved to be the most efficient and cost-effective
> way for any country to produce the most finds, the largest tkws and that
> these end in the institutes.
>
> So I suggest: No laws at all, at best, a right for preemption.
>
> That meteorite finders are rewarded for their work, performance, service -
> is not only a matter of course it is an imperative of ethical behaviour.
> Full stop.
>
> Confiscation with financial compensation I think wouldn't work, as the
> official side would be overextended to determine a market value.
> In fact already today only a few very scientists and clerks seems to have an
> idea of meteorite pricings - else we wouldn't have all these new laws and
> else the institutes would buy like fools, to take advantage from the now
> still so unseen low price level.
>
> Second possibility. 50-50 if state is land owner,
> or in general 50% for the country, no matter where the meteorite was found.
> The latter will be possible, because of the strong legal protection of
> property in free governments under the law, maybe only in non-democratic or
> communist countries or other dictatorships.
> That of course would make meteorites more expensive for all others, private
> collectors, scientists and curators.
>
> Huhuhu.... if I take Wietrzno-Bobrka...then in Poland in every fifth
> generation a meteorite is found.
> It must be a very very happy country that it hasn't any other problems grave
> enough, that they had the leisure to invent a law for meteorites....
>
> Maybe a self-regulating system? If now less than a new meteorite per year is
> found in Australia, maybe the laws there are recognized to be obsolete and
> will be cancelled?
>
> Panama, Israel, Liberia... they haven't any meteorite yet.
> Perhaps they should pass a law of preventive character, for the case that
> one day a meteorite will fall there?
>
> Any innocent bystander of that global meteorite laws debate would come to
> the conclusion, that this all is a very very silly thing, I suppose.
>
>
>
> -----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com
> [mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com] Im Auftrag von Carl 's
> Gesendet: Mittwoch, 10. M?rz 2010 00:17
> An: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
> Betreff: Re: [meteorite-list] 5 reasons to record meteorite coordinates
>
>
>
> Hi Carl,
>
> Another way to see how important co-ordinates are is just to look at what's
> happened to the NWA meteorites. Nobody knows where they are found, so many
> pairings and unclassified stones!
>
> Good luck on the classification of your new find.
>
> Carl2
>
>
>>I don't yet understand why people put so much importance on find
> co-ords and strewnfields... I
>
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Received on Wed 10 Mar 2010 08:44:43 AM PST