Field Guide
Most meteorites pass through collections quietly. A small number rewrote what we know about the age of the Earth, the chemistry that came before life, and the worlds that broke apart to make them. These are the stones that earned their names.
Written by Brian McDonald, IMCA #3323, Treasure Coast Meteorite Co.
Out of roughly seventy thousand classified meteorites, only a few are known far beyond the laboratory. A meteorite becomes famous for one of a few reasons: it was seen falling and recovered quickly, it carried a scientific first, it survived as an enormous mass, or its story simply outran the science. The fourteen below cover all of those routes to fame, grouped by what they actually are. If you want the underlying categories first, start with the types of meteorites and how meteorites are classified.
Carbonaceous chondrites: the chemists of the solar system
Carbonaceous chondrites are among the most primitive material that survives entry, close in composition to the cloud the planets formed from. They carry water, organic molecules, and grains older than the Sun. Browse the carbonaceous chondrite collection, or read what a chondrite is for the structure behind the name.
Allende
CV3 carbonaceous chondrite | Observed fall, 1969 | Chihuahua, Mexico
Just after one in the morning on 8 February 1969, a fireball broke apart over the state of Chihuahua and scattered stones across a strewn field tens of kilometers long. Because more than two tonnes were recovered, Allende became the most studied meteorite in history, and it arrived at the perfect moment: laboratories preparing to receive the first Apollo lunar samples turned their new instruments on it instead. Inside its dark matrix are calcium and aluminum rich inclusions, the oldest dated solids in the solar system at about 4.567 billion years, alongside the small spherical chondrules that give chondrites their name. Allende is, in effect, a reference clock for the solar system’s first few million years. See its Meteoritical Bulletin entry.
Murchison
CM2 carbonaceous chondrite | Observed fall, 1969 | Victoria, Australia
Seven months after Allende, on 28 September 1969, stones fell near the town of Murchison in Victoria. Roughly a hundred kilograms were collected, and the timing again mattered: the new analytical methods built for lunar return found something remarkable in the rock. Murchison contains a deep inventory of organic compounds, including more than seventy amino acids, most of which life on Earth does not use, plus components of the molecules that store genetic information. It also holds presolar grains, dust that formed around other stars before the Sun existed, some dated to about seven billion years old. For anyone asking where the building blocks of biochemistry come from, Murchison is the headline specimen. See its Meteoritical Bulletin entry.
Tagish Lake
C2 ungrouped carbonaceous chondrite | Observed fall, 2000 | British Columbia, Canada
On 18 January 2000 a fireball lit the Yukon and northern British Columbia, and fragments fell onto the frozen surface of Tagish Lake. What makes this one exceptional is how it was handled: a local resident gathered pieces while they were still frozen, without touching them bare-handed, and kept them cold. That care preserved one of the most primitive and least contaminated carbonaceous samples available, so fragile and porous that much of it would crumble in the hand. It records organic chemistry and presolar material from the outer asteroid belt with minimal terrestrial interference. See its Meteoritical Bulletin entry.
Ordinary chondrites: common stone, uncommon stories
Ordinary chondrites are the most abundant meteorites that reach the ground, yet a few have outsized histories. They sit at the heart of the chondrite collection, and the chondrite primer explains the textures that define them.
Chelyabinsk
LL5 ordinary chondrite | Observed fall, 2013 | Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia
On the morning of 15 February 2013 a body about twenty meters across entered over the southern Urals and detonated as an airburst some thirty kilometers up, releasing energy estimated in the hundreds of kilotons. The flash outshone the Sun, and the shockwave that followed blew out windows across the city, injuring roughly fifteen hundred people, almost all from flying glass. Recorded on hundreds of dashboard cameras, it became the most thoroughly documented meteorite event in history, and it reshaped how seriously the world treats small near-Earth objects. The largest recovered fragment, over six hundred kilograms, was lifted from the bed of Lake Chebarkul. See its Meteoritical Bulletin entry.
Ensisheim
LL6 ordinary chondrite | Observed fall, 1492 | Alsace, France
On 7 November 1492 a single stone of about one hundred twenty seven kilograms fell into a wheat field outside the Alsatian town of Ensisheim, watched by the whole district. It is the oldest meteorite fall in the Western world for which the actual stone survives and the record runs unbroken to the present day. The young Habsburg king Maximilian, passing through days later, declared it an omen and ordered it preserved in the local church. Centuries of visitors chipped pieces away, but the main mass still sits in Ensisheim, the founding object of European meteoritics. See its Meteoritical Bulletin entry.
Iron meteorites: the cores of shattered worlds
Iron meteorites are fragments of the metal cores of early planetesimals that melted, separated, and were later broken open by collisions. Cut and etched, many reveal the Widmanstatten pattern, a crystal structure that takes millions of years to grow and cannot be faked. Browse the iron meteorite collection. Several of the largest masses on Earth are irons, covered from the size angle on the largest meteorite ever found.
Hoba
Iron, ungrouped (ataxite) | Find, 1920 | Grootfontein, Namibia
Hoba is the largest single meteorite known, a slab of nickel iron weighing roughly sixty tonnes that a farmer struck while plowing in 1920. It has never been moved, because nothing practical can lift it, and it still rests where it fell in northern Namibia, now a national monument. Its very high nickel content makes it an ataxite, a structural class that does not show the classic etched pattern of most irons. Oddly for an object this size, it left no crater, which suggests it met the ground at a shallow angle and relatively low speed. See its Meteoritical Bulletin entry.
Gibeon
Iron, IVA (fine octahedrite) | Find, documented 1836 | Great Namaqualand, Namibia
Gibeon fell in prehistory and weathered slowly across a strewn field covering tens of thousands of square kilometers in what is now Namibia. The Nama people worked its metal into tools and weapons long before it was described for science in 1836. When cut and etched it shows one of the cleanest fine Widmanstatten patterns of any iron, which is why Gibeon is the material most often set into jewelry and watch dials. Stable and slow to rust, it is also a favorite first iron for collectors. See its Meteoritical Bulletin entry.
Muonionalusta
Iron, IVA (fine octahedrite) | Find, 1906 | Norrbotten, Sweden
First found in 1906 near the Muonio River in Arctic Sweden, Muonionalusta is among the oldest meteorites by terrestrial age, having landed roughly a million years ago and survived multiple ice ages buried in the ground. It shows a crisp fine Widmanstatten pattern and contains tiny high-pressure mineral inclusions formed by ancient impacts on its parent body. Durable and widely available in slices, it has become one of the most recognizable irons in collections. We keep a dedicated Muonionalusta collection. See its Meteoritical Bulletin entry.
Sikhote-Alin
Iron, IIAB (coarsest octahedrite) | Observed fall, 1947 | Primorsky Krai, Russia
The largest witnessed iron fall in recorded history arrived at half past ten in the morning on 12 February 1947, when a fireball brighter than the Sun crossed the sky over the Sikhote-Alin mountains of the Russian Far East. The original mass, estimated near a hundred tonnes before entry, broke apart violently, and more than twenty three tonnes were recovered. Specimens come in two forms collectors prize: smooth individuals dimpled with regmaglypts, the thumbprint-like hollows carved by ablation, and jagged shrapnel torn loose when the body exploded in the air. See its Meteoritical Bulletin entry.
Canyon Diablo
Iron, IAB-MG (coarse octahedrite) | Find, 1891 | Coconino County, Arizona, USA
Canyon Diablo is the body that dug Meteor Crater in northern Arizona roughly fifty thousand years ago, scattering iron fragments for miles around the rim. About thirty tonnes have been recovered since 1891. Its scientific weight is hard to overstate: in the 1950s, lead isotope measurements on Canyon Diablo metal gave the first reliable age of the Earth, about 4.55 billion years, a figure still quoted today. The shock of impact also forged tiny diamonds inside some fragments. Collecting at the crater is now prohibited, so material on the market predates that closure. See its Meteoritical Bulletin entry.
Campo del Cielo
Iron, IAB-MG (coarse octahedrite) | Find, ancient fall | Chaco, Argentina
Campo del Cielo, the Field of the Sky, is a strewn field and crater group in northern Argentina from a fall roughly four to five thousand years ago. Spanish expeditions went looking for its metal in 1576 after hearing of it from Indigenous peoples, beginning a documented history nearly four and a half centuries long. The total recovered mass runs well over a hundred tonnes and includes giants such as the El Chaco and Gancedo masses, each in the tens of tonnes, which appear on our largest meteorite page from the size angle. Affordable and widely available, it is a frequent entry point for new collectors. See its Meteoritical Bulletin entry.
Stony-irons: the pallasites
Pallasites are the most visually striking meteorites of all, gem-green olivine crystals suspended in a nickel iron matrix, thought to form at the boundary between a differentiated asteroid’s core and mantle. They are scarce, making up well under one percent of all meteorites. Read what a pallasite is, or browse the stony-iron collection.
Fukang
Pallasite, PMG (main group) | Find, 2000 | Xinjiang, China
Found near Fukang in 2000 as a single mass of just over a thousand kilograms, this pallasite is prized for the clarity and color of its olivine. Where many pallasites have clouded, fractured crystals, Fukang’s are large and translucent, so a thin slice held to the light glows like stained glass. Cut sections are among the most sought-after display pieces in the hobby, and major fragments have sold at auction for tens of thousands of dollars. It was published in the Meteoritical Bulletin No. 90 in 2006. See its Meteoritical Bulletin entry.
Martian meteorites: pieces of another planet
Fewer than four hundred meteorites are known to come from Mars, blasted off its surface by impacts and collected on Earth after long journeys through space. They are confirmed by trapped gas that matches the Martian atmosphere measured by spacecraft. Read what a Martian meteorite is, or browse the Martian collection.
ALH 84001
Martian orthopyroxenite | Find, 1984 | Allan Hills, Antarctica
Collected on the Antarctic ice in 1984 and at first filed as an ordinary find, ALH 84001 turned out to be one of the oldest Martian rocks known, with a crystallization age of about four billion years. In 1996 a NASA-led team announced that its carbonate globules, microscopic magnetite, and organic molecules might be traces of ancient Martian microbial life. The claim was debated hard, and most researchers now favor non-biological explanations for the features, but the announcement is widely credited with launching the modern field of astrobiology and a wave of Mars exploration. See its Meteoritical Bulletin entry.
Tissint
Martian shergottite (olivine-phyric) | Observed fall, 2011 | Tata Province, Morocco
On 18 July 2011 a fireball split the sky over the Oued Draa valley in Morocco, and months later searchers recovered fresh, glossy black stones from the desert. Tissint is the fifth Martian fall ever witnessed and the first since 1962, which makes it scientifically precious: its interior was sampled before Earth’s weather and biology could contaminate it. Inside, pockets of black impact glass trap gas matching the Martian atmosphere, and the rock preserves a record of water and surface chemistry on Mars. It was published as Meteoritical Bulletin 100 in 2012. See its Meteoritical Bulletin entry.
The vocabulary, in plain terms
- Fall vs find
- A fall was seen coming down and recovered soon after, so it is fresh and well documented. A find was discovered later, sometimes after thousands of years on the ground.
- Chondrite
- A stony meteorite that never fully melted, still carrying the small spherical chondrules from the early solar system. More in what is a chondrite.
- Octahedrite and the Widmanstatten pattern
- Most iron meteorites are octahedrites. Cut and etched, they reveal interlocking crystal bands that grew over millions of years. See the Widmanstatten pattern explained.
- Pallasite
- A stony-iron with olivine crystals set in nickel iron metal. More in what is a pallasite.
- Shergottite
- The most common class of Martian meteorite, basaltic igneous rock from the Martian crust.
- TKW
- Total known weight, the recovered mass of a given meteorite across all specimens.
Every meteorite above is tied to its entry in the Meteoritical Bulletin Database, the official record maintained by the Meteoritical Society. When you evaluate any specimen for purchase, the classification and the Bulletin citation are what separate a documented meteorite from an unverified rock. We explain the system in the Meteoritical Bulletin, explained and in what NWA numbers mean.
"A meteorite’s name is a promise that someone, somewhere, can check the record."
Build a collection around the classics
You can own pieces of most of these histories. Sikhote-Alin individuals, Gibeon and Muonionalusta slices, Campo del Cielo masses, Fukang sections, and Martian fragments all reach the collector market, at a wide range of prices.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most famous meteorite in the world?
There is no single answer, because meteorites earn fame in different ways. Allende is the most scientifically studied, ALH 84001 is the most publicized for the Mars life debate, Hoba is the largest single mass, and Chelyabinsk is the most widely recorded fall. Each is the most famous within its own category.
What is the largest meteorite ever found?
The Hoba meteorite in Namibia, at roughly sixty tonnes, is the largest single mass ever found and has never been moved. We cover the full size ranking on the largest meteorite ever found.
Which famous meteorites can a collector actually buy?
Many of them. Sikhote-Alin, Gibeon, Muonionalusta, Campo del Cielo, Canyon Diablo, Fukang, and various Martian and carbonaceous specimens all circulate among collectors. Others, such as Hoba and the Ensisheim main mass, are protected and not for sale.
Why are meteorites that were seen falling more valuable?
A witnessed fall is recovered fresh, with little weathering and a clear origin, so it is better documented and better preserved than a find that sat exposed for centuries. That documentation and freshness usually raise both scientific and collector value.
How do I know a famous meteorite is authentic?
Look for the classification and the Meteoritical Bulletin citation, and buy from a seller who provides them. Read the Meteoritical Bulletin, explained and our guide to learning about meteorites to understand what proper documentation looks like.
Classifications and figures here follow the Meteoritical Bulletin Database. Treasure Coast Meteorite Co., IMCA member 3323. Unless specifically stated in titles and descriptions, all meteorites sold by Treasure Coast Meteorite Co. are scientifically classified specimens with Meteoritical Bulletin citations.
