Hi Shawn and List. Interesting you brought this up. I remember years ago
purchasing a rare meteorite specifically because of its age. Could not
remember for which one (old age thing!) anyways I remember what meteorite
that was.....Tieschitz. Fell July 15, 1878 at 1345 hrs. I will try and find
the article/study/results which I know I saved on this meteorite and forward
it to the list...Since I have it in my collection I wrote a few things about
the meteorite on my index card file. Contains pre-solar Al rich oxide
grains. Most of these grains originate in red giants. Age was estimated at
4.59 A± 0.09Ga which exceeds the age of Allende and the others mentioned.
At least this is what I had jotted down.
Sincerely
Don Merchant
IMCA #0960
----- Original Message -----
From: "Shawn Alan" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, January 28, 2010 7:04 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] THE OLDEST METEORITE ?
The age old question, which meteorite is the oldest? I have done some
reading on this topic and asked a few people what they thought and here is
what I have gathered so far.
Allende is 4,565.45 (+-0.45) m.y. and I have also seen Allende dated at
4,5685 b.y. Burkhardt (2007), which could make Allende one of the oldest
meteorites. But then I have read that D'Orbigny, stated by Qing-Zhu Yin
(2009) is the oldest meteorite, with an age of 4,567.91 (+- 0.76) m.y. But
to counter Qing-Zhu Yin claim, in 2009 Tistarite a new refractory mineral
was found in Allende which this new refractory mineral is among the first
solids formed in the solar system ( American Mineralogist 2009 ).
If this didn’t get confusing enough, a newly identified refractory
inclusion in Murchison composed of hibonite represents some of the
earliest condensed solids or residues from the early, hot, solar nebula
(Liu et al., 2009). These refractory inclusions comprise of platy crystals
and blue aggregates, which formation occurred hundreds of thousands of
years before the formation of CV CAIs ( http://www.meteoritestudies.com/ )
But some people have a different idea of the age old question and feel
that the Vigarano meteorite is the oldest meteorite. Vigarano fell at 9:30
pm 22 January 1910 in Emilia, Italy. Two stones of 11.5 kg and 4.5 kg were
found. This is the type specimen for the CV class. A case can be made for
Vigarano being the oldest meteorite. Although older ages have been
recorded for other meteorites they are isolated measurements and do not
give as consistently an old age as does Vigarano (
http://www.star-bits.com/VIGARANO.htm ) .
Now back to the question what is the oldest meteorite?
Shawn Alan
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