[meteorite-list] New Bensour fall

[Michael Farmer]

Hello everyone, I have just arrived home from a very hard 5 days of traveling to Africa and back. I am leaving tomorrow (Wednesday) for Tahiti for a vacation with my wife for 10 days, so I will certainly not have time to really answer any emails until I get home from that trip. This will be almost around the entire planet in 3 days! Anyway, I just want to write a quick note about the new fall. It is spectacular! Bessey was of course wrong in every aspect, it never did rain there, the pieces I got are ALL PRISTINE, NEVER touched by a drop of water or you would certainly see it. He said he and Bruno "cleaned them out" Yeah, whatever, I have 18.5 kilos of pieces, including the main mass of 9.5 kilos! Many small individuals, from 1/10 GRAM to ~150 grams. It is finished now though! I had almost 60 people hunting in preparation for my arrival. The total weight seems to be in the 25 kilo range unless some people are not reporting accurately what they have.           As for the fall, I interviewed several eyewitnesses (with a translator of course) and here is the story as told by Amhirich Omar, a Berber who was camping in the area. "Omar was out tending his camels when at about 4 in the afternoon on Sunday February 10, 2002, he saw a light in the sky to the west. It rapidly grew very bright but was not moving (it was coming at him strait on). Then quickly the object exploded into many pieces, and passed overhead leaving a trail of dark smoke. A moment later the explosions like thunder were very loud. He thought that it was a military jet that had been shot down. He saw the pieces fall to the ground about 3 kilometers from where he was. He told his children to guard the animals and he took his brother to go find the crashed airplane. (The area is on the disputed Morocco/Algeria border, and military is common there. No one is allowed there but military and Berbers who have rights to pass about anywhere.) When the arrived at the area where he saw the pieces fall, he found burned black stones everywhere, and many broken pieces. They landed in a rocky area so many shattered when they hit the ground. He took some and went back to the camp. Many of the people there knew that they were meteorites, as it is a common business in that area, so the next day many people went to collect the stones.  The meteorite pieces were in a line of about 5 or 6 kilometers, the small stones were all in one large area, and the larger pieces spread out far between each one. They crossed the border into Algeria, so the smaller pieces were in Morocco, and the larger ones in Algeria! At first a  few pieces went to Rissani to be sold, but then there was little interest so the rest were kept by the Berbers. The fall was seen by many people in different towns, it passed north of Rissani from the Northwest to the Southeast.   The date was listed previously as 11 or 12 Feb, but it is confirmed to be afternoon on Feb 10 as this is Sunday and that is market day in Rissani, so many Berbers had gone to the market there that day.   I would like to note that apparently Dean Bessy and Bruno learned of my arrival and started offering large sums to buy the stones (even though Dean keeps saying that he had already cleaned it out) so that drove the price up on me there. Either way, I was the first one to come there and meet with them directly so I learned the important information. It was a very successful trip and I am very pleased with the material . Alot of the stones are very small, like Pultusk and Holbrook, so we will have some nice stuff to offer when I get home from Tahiti.   Anyway Dean, you can get off your "farmer got the old wet ruined stone bit when you see what I have, Ill post photos tomorrow."   Thanks and good night, I need some sleep! Mike Farmer Meteorite Hunter