A TIMBUKTU COMPLETE SLICE — FROM THERE TO…TIMBUKTU

Meteorites are named after the places to which they have been “delivered”, and the current offering, which originated in the asteroid belt, landed in Timbuktu. In 2015 an unusual rock was found by a Timbuktu resident near an old trade route north of town which he brought home as an oddity. Fortuitously, a Moroccan meteorite dealer happened to be visiting friends in Timbuktu, recognized it as a meteorite and bought it from the finder. Mesosiderites are a class of stony–iron meteorites—the other being pallasites—and consist of approximately equal parts of metallic nickel-iron and silicate. The matrix is a mixture of segregated russet-bronze silicates, iron-nickel flakes & nodules and centimeter-sized yellow-green pyroxene aggregates. There is minimal brecciation. There are only four mesosiderites with the B4 designation which indicates the abundance of plagioclase and the petrologic type "4". Unlike pallasites, which formed at the boundary of the stony mantle and molten core of an asteroid that was later disrupted by a collision, the formation of mesosiderites is less-well understood. One leading model is that these rocks formed after the impact of a semi-molten core of one asteroid with the basaltic surface of a larger, intact asteroid.

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 catalogue note.