


This meteorite isn’t behind a glass case, so visitors have the rare opportunity to reach out and touch a hunk of rock that has traveled out in space for billions of years. In the Gem and Mineral Hall, several meteorites are on display for visitors to enjoy, the biggest of which is the Canyon Diablo Meteorite-one of many chunks left over from an asteroid impact about 50,000 years ago that created the Barringer Crater in Arizona. The Canyon Diablo Meteorite on display in the Gem and Mineral Hall at NHM. But this is what we have, and we’re sticking with it, so get on board. Could we have called them all the same thing and called it a day? Maybe. Add out-of-this-world Pallasite to your mineral/meteorite collection Pallasite is a rust-brown color with translucent yellow-green spots and white veining. And finally, meteorites are meteoroids that have crash-landed on Earth. Meteors are bright streaks of light seen in the sky as the rock ignites in our atmosphere. PLEASE NOTE: WE DO NOT STABILIZE ADMIRE PALLASITE METEORITE OR SERICHO PALLASITE METEORITE FOR OTHERS. meteorite and such, the naming convention goes like so: meteoroids are small rocky objects traveling out in space. Meteorite Stabilization and Restoration Services. It may once have been part of a big asteroid, and possibly formed at the border of the outer shell and a more molten core.Īnd as a quick aside, in case you’ve ever been confused about meteor vs. This rare type of meteorite is made of iron and nickel, and the bright yellowish bits are olivine crystals (which are made of magnesium, iron, silicon, and oxygen). The meteorite featured above is a slice from a pallasite meteorite found in Russia. From the looks of it, there were fewer than 60 minerals when the solar system formed, which means that the more than 5,000 minerals we find here on Earth today have been created since then by the workings of our planet. Many meteorites are the leftovers of that process, which sounds a little sad, like they were picked last for kickball, but it’s lucky that these bits remained independent, because each of them can teach us a lot about our early solar system, such as what minerals initially made up the planets. That was when the sun and planets formed, as dust and debris swirling in space started to clump together and form these big bodies. The presence of olivine mineral inclusions in the iron-nickel meteorite classifies it as a rare pallasite class. The Gem and Mineral Collection has over 50 meteorites, many as old as our solar system -around 4.6 billion years old. But by far, the oldest items within our care are meteorites. These extra-terrestrial gemstones mirror the stellar beauty of the cosmos. In the collections here at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, you will find no shortage of old specimens -historical documents, animals preserved in jars, and many, many fossils. Of all the rarities on Earth the most eye-catching and unique are pallasites.
