Dronino Meteorite

A GORGEOUSLY PATINATED IRON METEORITE IN THE SHAPE OF DRIFTWOOD

The Dronino meteorite was discovered in the year 2000 by a mushroom hunter, Oleg Gus'kov, as he was returning home to Moscow from a mushroom hunting trip near the village of Dronino in the Ryazan region. In early 2003, a piece of the meteorite was taken to the Vernadsky, the Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences, where they identified it as a meteorite. Of course, the Vernadsky has a storied history, not least of which includes the role it played in the identification and collection of the Sikhote-Alin meteorites (see Lots 71 & 84).

This stunning Dronino meteorite, a rare ataxite like Chinga (see Lot 101), is covered in an almost otherworldly silvery patina and sculpted only by nature into the shape of driftwood. As with all iron meteorites, it originated from the core of an asteroid that broke apart following a violent collision in the asteroid belt, at which point it would have been bumped into an Earth-crossing orbit before making its way through the atmosphere and to the Earth's surface.

REFERENCES:

Meteoritical Bulletin Entry for Dronino