Formeꦗrly in the collection of the Vernadsky Museum, Soviet Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russ𒅌ia.

A HISTORIC METEORITE FORMERLY IN THE C💎OLLECTION OF THE SOVIET UNION'S VERNADSKY MUSEUM

On February 12, 1947, a large meteor traveling approximately 9 miles per second soar𒀰ed across the Sikhote-Alin moun⛎tains in Russia's Far East, northeast of Vladivostok. Observed by many eyewitnesses, the "fireball moved from north to south and, at 10:38 a.m. local time, fragmented in the Earth's atmosphere. The debris covered an elliptical area of 1.6 square kilometers on the snow covered western spurs of the Sikhote Alin mountains."

The impact site was first discovered by a pair of pilots flying over the mount𓆉ains; they had witnessed a meteor the day prior and had good reason to believe that the felled trees and craters they observed from above were the result. Reporting their find once they reached the town of Khabarovsk, the Geological 🥀Society of Khabarovsk organized a search party, eventually finding dozens of craters in an area of destroyed forest.

On April 27, a second expedition arrived from the Soviet Academy of Sciences, including the Soviet geologist E.L. Krinov. Krino💖v had cut his te✱eth working on the Tunguska Event impact site, and whereas the first group had only found shrapnel-like meteorites (see Lot 84), Krinov and his team found unfragmented pieces covered in thumbprint-like regmaglypts and bearing a fusion crust. Whereas the jagged and twisted shrapnel-like specimens resulted from a low-altitude explosion of the meteor, gently scalloped specimens such as this one broke free of the main mass in the upper atmosphere and acquired the aerodynamic regmaglypts on their descent to Earth.

Adorned with collection stickers and offered with a collection tag from the Soviet Union's Vernadsky Museum, this is a must have piece for serious meteorite collectors and any person who appreciates the history of meteoritics — a piece made even more special by the fact that it has not been cleaned since it was collected, a trueꦍ rarity.

REFERENCES:

Norton, O. Richard. Rocks from Space: Meteorites and Meteorite Hunters. Missoula: Mountain Press, 1998, 100-109.