Gebel Kamil Iron Meteorite, Ungrouped Ataxite, 1039.06g Whole Shrapnel, Shield-Shaped Impact Crater Specimen

A 1,039.06 g shield of Kamil crater shrapnel

This 1,039.06 g Gebel Kamil specimen is a single, uncut piece of the iron meteorite that blasted out the 45 m Kamil crater in southwestern Egypt. Seen face on, it forms a flattened, shield-shaped plate with a raised, curled lip at one shoulder. Its cleaned exterior shows the marks of explosive fragmentation across every face: torn and twisted margins, a folded flap of metal bent upward from the edge, and dense fields of fine parallel striations that fan across the broad faces of the plate.

The Meteoritical Bulletin records Gebel Kamil as an ungrouped iron, a Ni-rich ataxite with extensive shear deformation. Apart from a single 83 kg individual, the material recovered at Kamil is shrapnel: pieces of the impactor torn apart when it struck the ground. This specimen shows that origin plainly. See all our Gebel Kamil specimens, browse more iron meteorites, or read what an iron meteorite is.

Structure and surfaces features

Shield-shaped outline. The main face is broad and gently domed, with a rounded lower margin and an irregular upper edge. In profile the piece is a thick plate rather than a block, thickest through the center and thinning toward the rim.

Folded and curled lip. At one upper shoulder the metal rolls back on itself into a raised, hooked lip. Close up, a flap of iron stands nearly upright from the edge with a clean, sharp-edged fold line. Folds of this kind form when ductile nickel-iron bends and tears instead of shattering.

Striation fields. Sets of fine, closely spaced parallel lines run across both broad faces. On the reverse they fan outward from a central ridge; on the front they sweep diagonally across the upper half of the plate. The Meteoritical Bulletin writeup notes shear dislocations offsetting the internal structure by several millimeters, "particularly close to the external surface."

Torn and twisted margins. The edges are jagged and irregular, with stepped breaks, pinched lobes and twisted projections. One edge shows a squared, angular break where the plate parted from neighboring metal.

Cleaned exterior with honest traces of oxide. The exterior has been cleaned, leaving a gray metallic surface with a soft satin luster. Traces of orange-brown iron oxide remain in a few recesses and along parts of the torn margins, visible in the close-up photographs. The specimen has not been cut, etched or coated.

Discovery and provenance

Gebel Kamil was found on 19 February 2009 in the East Uweinat Desert of Egypt, in the Al Wadi al Jadid governorate. The crater was first noticed in 2008 by mineralogist Vincenzo De Michele, formerly of the Natural History Museum in Milan, who spotted its circular outline in satellite imagery on Google Earth. According to the European Space Agency, he passed the find to astrophysicist Mario Di Martino of INAF's Turin observatory, who organized an expedition with Luigi Folco of the Museo Nazionale dell'Antartide in Siena.

Italian and Egyptian teams surveyed the site in February 2009 and February 2010 under the 2009 Italian-Egyptian Year of Science and Technology. The Bulletin records about 1,600 kg of iron shrapnel in thousands of pieces, ranging from under 1 g to 35,000 g, plus a single 83 kg individual completely covered in well developed regmaglypts. About 800 kg of that total was recovered. ESA, which funded the 2010 expedition through its Space Situational Awareness programme, reported that the 83 kg individual lay about 200 m from the crater and may have split from the main body before impact.

The main mass of the recovered specimens is held at the Egyptian Geological Museum in Cairo. Type specimens are held at the Museo Nazionale dell'Antartide, University of Siena, and at the University of Pisa. This specimen was acquired by Treasure Coast Meteorite Co.

Sources: Meteoritical Bulletin entry, MB 98; European Space Agency, 23 September 2010.

Scientific context

Gebel Kamil is classified by M. D'Orazio and Luigi Folco as an iron meteorite (ungrouped), Ni-rich ataxite, with extensive shear deformation and low weathering. Its metal carries 19.8 wt% nickel and 0.75 wt% cobalt, with 49 ppm gallium and 121 ppm germanium. "Ungrouped" means that chemistry does not fall inside any of the established iron meteorite groups, so Gebel Kamil samples a parent body not otherwise represented in the classified record.

Etched sections described in the Bulletin show an ataxitic structure interrupted on a centimeter scale by crystals of schreibersite, troilite and daubreelite wrapped in swathing kamacite. The matrix is a duplex plessite of kamacite and taenite lamellae 1 to 5 micrometers thick, arranged in a micro-Widmanstatten pattern visible only under magnification. Read more in the Widmanstatten pattern explained.

Kamil is one of very few places on Earth where a small, young impact crater and the meteorite that made it can be studied together. The crater is well preserved in the hyperarid desert, and researchers have used it to test models of how small iron bodies survive atmospheric entry and how they fragment on impact.

What the research reports

The Meteoritical Bulletin classifies Gebel Kamil as Iron, ungrouped, published in Meteoritical Bulletin 98 (2010). The peer-reviewed studies below agree with that classification and describe the crater and its shrapnel in more detail. Their totals differ slightly from the Bulletin: the field team counted every specimen it located, while the Bulletin records the mass observed and the portion recovered, and the largest shrapnel piece is given as 34 kg in the 2011 study against 35,000 g in the Bulletin. The findings come from the authors' own fieldwork, samples and methods, and are given here as the studies state them.

Folco et al. (2010): the discovery report

L. Folco, M. Di Martino, A. El Barkooky, M. D'Orazio and fourteen Italian and Egyptian co-authors reported the find in The Kamil Crater in Egypt (Science, volume 329, page 804, 2010). During systematic searches they located 5,178 iron meteorite specimens totalling about 1.71 tonnes in and around the crater. Apart from the one 83 kg individual, all were shrapnel produced when the impactor broke apart on striking the ground.

Folco et al. (2011): what the shrapnel looks like and where it landed

The same team described the crater and its debris in Kamil Crater (Egypt): Ground truth for small-scale meteorite impacts on Earth (Geology, volume 39, pages 179 to 182, 2011). They describe the shrapnel as ranging from sharp-edged and jagged to more rounded and smooth, and report that "Twisted edges are very common." The shrapnel is concentrated to the southeast of the crater and nearly absent to the northwest, which the authors read as a downrange jet of debris from an oblique impact arriving from the northwest. Their modeling suggests an iron body of roughly 5 to 10 tonnes striking at about 3.5 km/s, from a pre-atmospheric mass of about 20 to 40 tonnes.

D'Orazio et al. (2011): the meteorite that made the crater

M. D'Orazio, L. Folco, A. Zeoli and C. Cordier published Gebel Kamil: The iron meteorite that formed the Kamil crater (Egypt) (Meteoritics & Planetary Science, volume 46, pages 1179 to 1196, 2011). They date the crater to less than 5,000 years ago and describe the crater and its meteorite fragments as extremely well preserved. With the exception of the 83 kg individual, they describe every specimen as "explosion fragments."

Urbini et al. (2012): one impactor, not a swarm

S. Urbini and colleagues published Geological and geophysical investigation of Kamil crater, Egypt (Meteoritics & Planetary Science, volume 47, pages 1842 to 1868, 2012). Their survey indicates the crater was made by a single mass or a very tight cluster of fragments, a departure from the general model in which small iron meteoroids break up in the atmosphere and form fields of several craters.

Fazio et al. (2014): shock in the target rock

A. Fazio, L. Folco, M. D'Orazio, M. L. Frezzotti and C. Cordier studied the crater walls and ejecta in Shock metamorphism and impact melting in small impact craters on Earth: Evidence from Kamil crater, Egypt (Meteoritics & Planetary Science, 2014). They estimate peak shock pressures of 30 to 60 GPa in the sandstone target and a vertical impact velocity component of at least 3.5 km/s. They report Kamil as the smallest crater where shatter cones, coesite, stishovite, diamond and melt veins have been found together.

Cavosie and Folco (2021): shocked zircon

Cavosie and Folco reported Shock-twinned zircon in ejecta from the 45-m-diameter Kamil crater in southern Egypt (in Large Meteorite Impacts and Planetary Evolution VI, Geological Society of America Special Paper 550, pages 419 to 430, 2021), extending the record of shock features at the crater to the mineral zircon.

Frequently asked questions

Is this meteorite classified?
Yes. Gebel Kamil is an official meteorite name, classified in the Meteoritical Bulletin (MB 98, 2010) as Iron, ungrouped. You can check the entry directly at the Meteoritical Bulletin Database. Treasure Coast Meteorite Co. is IMCA Member #3323.

What do "ungrouped" and "ataxite" mean?
Ungrouped means the meteorite's chemistry does not match any established iron meteorite group. Ataxite describes iron so rich in nickel that no visible Widmanstatten pattern develops; the Bulletin writeup records Gebel Kamil as a Ni-rich ataxite with 19.8 wt% nickel.

Is this an individual or shrapnel?
Shrapnel. The Bulletin records one 83 kg individual covered in regmaglypts; everything else recovered at Kamil is shrapnel produced when the impactor exploded on striking the ground. This piece is whole shrapnel: uncut, with its torn and folded surfaces intact.

What are the explosive shrapnel features on this piece?
Twisted and torn margins, a folded lip of metal bent upward from one edge, and fields of fine parallel striations across the broad faces. Folco and colleagues (2011) describe twisted edges as very common on Kamil shrapnel, and the Bulletin notes shear deformation concentrated near the outer surface.

Has the surface been cleaned or treated?
The exterior has been cleaned. It has not been cut, etched or coated. Traces of orange-brown iron oxide remain in a few recesses and along parts of the torn edges, as shown in the photographs.

Will this show a Widmanstatten pattern?
No. The specimen is uncut and unetched, and as a Ni-rich ataxite Gebel Kamil does not develop a visible Widmanstatten pattern. The Bulletin describes a micro-Widmanstatten structure in the plessite matrix, visible only under magnification on etched sections.

How should I care for it?
The Bulletin records low weathering for Gebel Kamil, but all iron meteorites can rust in humid air. Handle with clean, dry hands and store away from moisture. See how to care for and store a meteorite and do meteorites rust.

What is included?
The 1,039.06 g Gebel Kamil specimen, a certificate of authenticity from Treasure Coast Meteorite Co. (IMCA #3323), and a certificate card bearing serial TC-00048.

How do I verify this is the same specimen shown in these photographs?
This specimen is recorded under serial TC-00048. Its specimen record is a permanent page holding the classification data as published in the Meteoritical Bulletin, the recorded weight and photographs of this exact piece. Shrapnel surfaces are individual to each fragment, so the specimen in hand can be compared against those photographs and weighed against the recorded figure.

Collector significance

Gebel Kamil ties a classified meteorite to a specific, well studied crater, with the impactor recovered under scientific survey and described in peer-reviewed literature. This piece carries that story on its surface. At 1,039.06 g it has real heft in the hand, and the shield outline, folded lip and striation fields read clearly from across a room while rewarding close inspection.

Uncut shrapnel keeps the record of the impact intact. Every fold, tear and striation on this specimen formed in the moment the Kamil impactor struck the desert, and none of it has been cut away.

This specimen is serialized as TC-00048 and listed in the Specimen Registry.

Meteoritical Bulletin entry: Gebel Kamil | Classification: Iron, ungrouped | Find, Egypt, 2009 | Treasure Coast Meteorite Co., IMCA #3323