Gibeon Meteorite

IRON FROM THE CORE OF AN ASTEROID

In the late 1830s, the Royal Geographic Society invited British Army captain James Edward Alexander to join an expeditionary force exploring the interior of the African continent. While in southern Africa, Alexander and his crew of eight obtained samples of iron which they were told came from large iron masses on the east side of the Fish River, running through the center of southern Namibia. Alexander and his team sent the samples back to Britain where John Herschel, the 19th century polymath famous for his invention of the blueprint as well as his chemical and astronomical findings, analyzed the samples and found them to be of meteoritic origin.

Although this is when the Gibeon meteorite became known to Western science, the meteorite had fallen thousands of years earlier and was already well known to the Nama people who lived in the area of Great Namaqualand. The Nama used the iron from Gibeon to create tools and weapons including the heads of their assegais, a type of polearm or spear common to much of Africa before the introduction of firearms. In the 1840s and 1850s, as European farmers and ranchers began to settle the area in larger numbers, many more Gibeon masses became known, collected, and traded, such that more than 26 tons of Gibeon have now been recovered from what is one of the largest strewn fields on Earth.

This gorgeous and sizeable Gibeon meteorite has regmaglypts all over its surface, the signature "thumbprint" impressions that occur when outer parts of a meteorite melt and fall off the mass as it hurtles through the atmosphere towards the Earth's surface. With a glossy patina and a beautiful display side, this is a special Gibeon meteorite that commands attention.

REFERENCES:

Meteoritical Bulletin Entry for Gibeon