The Canyon Diablo
meteorite
A meteorite is a rock (geology), rock that originated in outer space and has fallen to the surface of a planet or Natural satellite, moon. When the original object enters the atmosphere, various factors such as friction, pressure, and chemical ...
refers to the many fragments of the
asteroid
An asteroid is a minor planet—an object larger than a meteoroid that is neither a planet nor an identified comet—that orbits within the Solar System#Inner Solar System, inner Solar System or is co-orbital with Jupiter (Trojan asteroids). As ...
that created
Meteor Crater (also called Barringer Crater),
Arizona
Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...
, United States. Meteorites have been found around the crater rim, and are named for nearby
Canyon Diablo, which lies about three to four miles west of the crater.
History
The impactor fell about 50,000 years ago. Initially known and used by pre-historic
Native Americans, Canyon Diablo meteorites have been collected and studied by the scientific community since the 19th century. Meteor Crater, from the late 19th to the early 20th century, was the center of a long dispute over the origin of craters that showed little evidence of volcanism. That debate was largely settled by the early 1930s, thanks to work by
Daniel M. Barringer, F.R. Moulton, and
Harvey Harlow Nininger.
In 1953,
Clair Cameron Patterson measured ratios of the
lead isotopes in samples of the meteorite. Through
U-Pb radiometric dating, a refined estimate of the
age of the Earth
The age of Earth is estimated to be 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years. This age may represent the age of Earth's accretion (astrophysics), accretion, or Internal structure of Earth, core formation, or of the material from which Earth formed. This dating ...
was obtained: 4.550 billion years (± 70 million years).
Composition and classification
This meteorite is an iron
octahedrite
Octahedrites are the most common Iron meteorite#Structural classification, structural class of iron meteorites. The structures occur because the meteoric iron has a certain nickel concentration that leads to the exsolution of kamacite out of tae ...
(coarse octahedrite).
Minerals reported from the meteorite include:
*
Cohenite – iron carbide
*
Chromite
Chromite is a crystalline mineral composed primarily of iron(II) oxide and chromium(III) oxide compounds. It can be represented by the chemical formula of Iron, FeChromium, Cr2Oxygen, O4. It is an oxide mineral belonging to the spinel group. The ...
– iron magnesium chromium oxide
*
Daubréelite – iron(II) chromium sulfide
*
Diamond
Diamond is a Allotropes of carbon, solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Diamond is tasteless, odourless, strong, brittle solid, colourless in pure form, a poor conductor of e ...
and
lonsdaleite – carbon
*
Graphite
Graphite () is a Crystallinity, crystalline allotrope (form) of the element carbon. It consists of many stacked Layered materials, layers of graphene, typically in excess of hundreds of layers. Graphite occurs naturally and is the most stable ...
– carbon
*
Haxonite – iron nickel carbide
*
Kamacite iron nickel alloy – the most common component.
*
Base metal sulfide
Sulfide (also sulphide in British English) is an inorganic anion of sulfur with the chemical formula S2− or a compound containing one or more S2− ions. Solutions of sulfide salts are corrosive. ''Sulfide'' also refers to large families o ...
s
*
Schreibersite – iron nickel phosphide
*
Taenite – iron nickel alloy
*
Troilite – a variety of the iron sulfide mineral pyrrhotite. The troilite in this sample is used as
the standard reference for sulfur isotope ratios.
*
Moissanite – a variety of silicon carbide, the second hardest natural mineral.
Samples may contain troilite-graphite nodules with metal veins and small diamonds.
Fragments
The biggest fragment ever found is the Holsinger Meteorite, weighing , now on display in the Meteor Crater Visitor Center on the rim of the crater. Other famous fragments:
* ,
Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, New Zealand. The largest fragment outside the United States.
*
,
Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle
The French National Museum of Natural History ( ; abbr. MNHN) is the national natural history museum of France and a of higher education part of Sorbonne University. The main museum, with four galleries, is located in Paris, France, within the Ja ...
, Paris, France.
* ,
Archenhold Observatory, Berlin, Germany.
*
,
Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona.
, MINES ParisTech Mineralogy Museum Paris School of Mines, France.
* ,
Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
* ,
Beloit College, Beloit, Wisconsin.
* ,
Griffith Observatory, Los Angeles, California.
* ,
Van Vleck Observatory,
Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University ( ) is a Private university, private liberal arts college, liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut, United States. It was founded in 1831 as a Men's colleges in the United States, men's college under the Methodi ...
, Middletown, Connecticut.
*
, "Clark Iron,"
Meteorite Gallery,
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...
.
* , Geology Museum,
University of Wisconsin
A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Uni ...
, Madison, Wisconsin.
*
,
Franklin Institute, Philadelphia.
*
,
Griffith Observatory, Los Angeles, California. Fragment loaned by the Geology Department of Pomona College.
*
,
California Academy of Sciences
The California Academy of Sciences is a research institute and natural history museum in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, that is among the largest List of natural history museums, museums of natural history in the world, housing over ...
, San Francisco.
* ,
Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas.
* ,
Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey.
*
,
Branner Library,
Stanford University
Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...
, Stanford, California.
* ,
Peoria Riverfront Museum, Dome Planetarium,
Peoria, Illinois.
* ,
Basket Meteorite,
Meteor Crater Museum, Arizona.
* ,
Wagner Free Institute of Science, Philadelphia.
* , Laurence Edward Oram, Phoenix, Arizona
* 82 grams (2.8 oz), Peter H. D. McKee, Seattle, Washington
* , Robert Tullman, St. Petersburg, Florida.
See also
*
Glossary of meteoritics
*
δ 34S
*
Reference materials for stable isotope analysis
References
External links
Mindat.org
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Meteorites found in the United States
Geology of Arizona
Meteorite falls
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