Like all iron meteorites, this originated from the core of a shattered asteroid between Mars and Jupiter. Campo del Cielo meteorites were first written about by Spanish explorers in 1576, nearly 4,000 years after their collision with Earth and far before their unearthly origins were understood. A Campo was the first large meteorite ever displayed at the British Museum of Natural History, and several large Campo del Cielo (“Valley of the Sky”) masses are today found in the finest museums in the world. Fortuitously, a previously unknown portion of the Campo strewn field (the area in which a meteorite shower is "strewn" across the Earth's surface) was discovered several years ago. Located at a higher elevation than the valley where the majority of Campos fell, the meteorites from this region were less susceptible to incursions of ground water and, as a result, exhibit more dynamic sculptural forms such as the current example.
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