Kaalijarv, IAB

For many years, Kaalijarv, or “Kaali,” has been an enigma to researchers and collectors alike.  I remember reading descriptions of the craters and historic excavations back in the 1990s and wondering…what happened to all of the meteorites?

The fall occurred on what is now the Estonian island of Saaremaa.  The largest Kaali crater measures a little over 100 meters across, and there are ±eight smaller associated craters.

This was a sizable crater field suggesting violent fragmentation, it was relatively young, and just a few small fragments of iron shrapnel were found in excavations of some of the craters.  That was it.

 

 

It just didn’t make sense.  This was an event like Henbury, Morasko, or Sikhote-Alin, and the existing shrapnel proved that meteorites should still be preserved – but there were…no meteorites.  Buchwald’s description of the find is a good synopsis of everything known through roughly 1970:

 

Since then, attempts have been made to date the craters, with somewhat conflicting results.  Thermoluminsence studies suggest that the craters formed approximately 7,600 years ago, sediments within the craters have been dated to 3,700 years old, and carbon-14 dating of organic material and charcoal found in/under the ejecta blanket of the main crater is even younger, dating to approximately 3,200 years before the present.  So, the craters are probably somewhere between ~7,600 and ~3,200 years old, ±.

As it turns out, the meteorites were there all along – people just needed metal detectors to find them.  Since around 2020, hunters have found a handful of iron meteorites weighing up to about 5 kg.  Larger masses must be present, but none have been found as of 2025.

This 2,316 gram individual is the nicest specimen I’ve seen among the new finds.  It’s fusion-crusted, mildly oriented, and has a deep, ablated cleft that nearly split it in half.  Thank you, Filip and Kazimierz.

Photos of this specimen being found: