Partial Slice of the Exotic NWA 8276 L3.00 Chondrite

Meteorites are named by scientists on the Nomenclature Committee of the Meteoritical Society after a geographical feature in the area where the meteorite was found. Where no such features exist, for example, in a vast desert, grids are named and the meteorites are numbered in the order in which they were recovered and analyzed. This partial slice of NWA 8276 is from a rock that was analyzed after being recovered from the North West African (NWA) grid of the Sahara Desert. Whereas the overwhelming majority of chondritic meteorites experienced at least minor metamorphism as a result of heating on their parent asteroids, there are only a handful of known chondrites that are essentially unchanged from the time they first formed from the cloud of gas and dust known as the “solar nebula” from which the Solar System arose. These are the ultra-rare type-3.00 rocks much prized by scientists. NWA 8276 is one such meteorite, and there is less than six pounds of such pristine material from this and other meteorites known to exist. NWA 8276 consists of innumerable unrecrystallized spheroidal chondrules of various sizes and textures packed together with about 10% interstitial fine-grained silicate matrix material. This fine-grained material is composed mainly of compacted nebular dust.

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.


Literature:
See entry in the Meteoritical Bulletin Database: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meteor/metbull.php?code=59487