Achondrite – bencubbinite Yobe, Nigeria

On April 3, 1984 at 6:30 P.M., a large mass burst into Earth’s atmosphere and became a blazing fireball over northeastern Nigeria. The meteorite landed in a cornfield, and the local citizenry broke the meteorite into numerous pieces that were carried away as talismans. Gujba is an exceedingly exotic coarse-grained bencubbinite—only a handful are known—and it is the only bencubbinite witnessed fall. Gujba is made up of large ellipsoidal metal nodules and even-larger silicate nodules consisting of fine-grained fan-like arrays of pyroxene. It also contains some mineral grains that can only exist as a result of tremendous shock-pressure. Gujba is believed to have formed within an impact plume caused by a cataclysmic collision on a chondritic asteroid billions of years ago. Among the most beautiful and unusual-looking meteorites known, Gujba is a distinguished artifact from the early history of our solar system.

Christie's would like to thank Dr. Alan E. Rubin at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California, Los Angeles for his assistance in preparing this catalog note.