Seymchan, Pallasite

The Seymchan meteorite was discovered in 1967: Buchwald described the recovery of the first specimens:

Screen Shot 2014-05-28 at 7.08.35 PMSince then, many meteorites have been recovered from the area; the largest have weighed several tonnes, and shrapnel suggests that even larger masses reached the ground.  With the discovery of additional specimens, it quickly became apparent that Seymchan was not simply a IIE iron.

Seymchan is a heterogeneous pallasite; some specimens are nickel-iron, with inclusions typical of iron meteorites, and some specimens are mostly olivine.  Here’s a video from Youtube, of a Russian meteorite hunter excavating a large pallasitic specimen.

But most complete specimens have been cut.  The 1,548 gram complete pallasite individual pictured below came from the Fersman Mineralogical Museum in Moscow.

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