Taza, Ungrouped Iron

Meteoritical Bulletin entry for Taza.

Long story short, it’s an ungrouped iron with a germanium content an order of magnitude or so above most iron meteorites.  One other iron, Butler, from Missouri, has a similar composition.  Some Taza specimens contain rare olivine crystals, usually associated with troilite inclusions.

Here are some cute small Tazas.

And this was the largest known individual from the fall for some years, but they’ve since found a bigger one.  This is still the largest oriented and best-preserved individual from the find.  It’s essentially a ~2 ½-foot-long ‘bullet.’  We don’t have an exact weight on it, but it weighs between 71 and 77 kilograms.  I apologize for the quality of the images; I took a few photos  while the iron was outside for about an hour during some remodeling.  It’s another one that’s hard to move..

The larger mass of Taza was purchased by a meteorite dealer and…turned into novelties.  Small slices, jewelry, and trinkets like paper knives and dog tags.  So the above individual is once again the largest known mass of Taza.

It was a nice iron.  What happened is just…sad.