This partial slice features one curved edge of the meteorite’s exterior rim with patches of fusion crust. Web-like strands of impact melt course through the creamy gray matrix and multi-hued inclusions. This beveled partial slice has the distinction of having been deaccessioned by the Russian Academy of Sciences. At the time it was cut by the Academy decades ago, there were no concerns as to the quality of the cuts being made and this specimen’s beveled thickness is a defining institutional characteristic of the era.
72 x 108 x 4 mm. (2.75 x 4.25 x 0.2 in.)

85.3 g.

While the Chelyabinsk meteorite shower of February 13, 2013 will forever be among the most historic meteorite showers of modern times—primarily as a result of the more than 1000 injuries from the shock waves shattering glass—decades earlier there was another historic meteorite shower that occurred in the same region. Precisely seventy years ago, on June 11, 1949 at 8:41am the Kunashak meteorite shower occurred. Accompanied by sonic booms, there was a shower of twenty stones—one of which punctured a rooftop. While Kunakshak is considered a common chondrite, it’s an uncommonly attractive example of an olivine-hypersthene chondrite.

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.