A SEYMCHAN METEORITE — MASSIVE TRANSITIONAL END PIECE WITH INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR REVEALED

In the 1960s, two large metallic masses were found in a streambed in a part of Siberia made infamous as the remote location of Stalin’s gulags. Identified as meteorites, they were named Seymchan after a nearby town. Neither contained any olivine. Unlike Imilac (see lot 2) and Esquel (see lot 31) and the vast majority of other pallasitic meteorites, the dispersion of olivine crystals in Seymchan is extremely heterogeneous—and many specimens of Seymchan have no olivine at all. This large format end piece is a transitional pallasite; crystals of olivine and peridot (gem-quality olivine) adorn a cut face dominated by a prominent Widmanstätten pattern. As this latticework manifests a slow cooling rate that provided sufficient time — millions of years — for the two dominant alloys to organize into their crystalline habit, its appearance alone is diagnostic of iron meteorites. Indeed, Seymchan possesses what is among the most muscular coarse octahedral patterns known. Seymchan is one of the most rust-resistant of iron-rich meteorites—due in part to its moderately high concentration of iridium, the second densest element and the most corrosion-resistant metal known.

Like all pallasites, this meteorite formed at the boundary of the stony mantle and molten iron core of an asteroid that shattered following an impact with another asteroid while both were traveling at cosmic velocities of several miles per second. This is a superlative example of an exotic meteorite.

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.