U of A scientists help identify two new minerals found in meteorites

peterpressmanNovember 29, 2022

“What we’re working on now is figuring out why these two new minerals are in this rock and not in others.”

A sample of the El Ali meteorite found in Somalia. A scientist at the University of Alberta helped him identify two new minerals during the classification of meteorites. Photo by University of Alberta Meteorite Collection /courtesy

Scientists at the University of Alberta have helped identify two new minerals from meteorites discovered on the other side of the earth.

Geologist Chris Herd has been working on the characterization and classification of meteorites after the university received a sample of the 15-tonne space rock found in Somalia, he told Postmedia in an interview. The effort is a collaborative effort involving the University of California, Los Angeles and the California Institute of Technology.

“At that point, I realized there were some things I couldn’t explain,” said Hurd, who is also a professor in the university’s Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

So he consulted a colleague, Andrew Rocock, who runs the University’s Electron Microprobe Lab, to analyze the meteorite’s chemistry more carefully, and he quickly learned that researchers had a finding. I found out

A meteorite called “Nightfall”

While the process of identifying new minerals requires researchers to do the hard work of explaining the material’s crystal structure and showing it to be different from other minerals, minerals found in meteorites were discovered in the 1980s. It had already been synthesized by a group of scientists. Make them easier to recognize, Hurd says.

“But the synthetic version is not officially a mineral,” Hurd said. “Minerals must exist in nature.”

In this case, it was a natural mass that fell from the star, guaranteeing the official name of the new mineral.

Elkin Stunt Night, named after Arizona State University professor Lindy ElkinsWhile tantons have a blocky structure, the meteorite itself, or ellarite, which is named after the place where the meteorite was found, has a more needle-like appearance, Hurd said.

Originally located in a limestone valley near El Ali, about 200 kilometers north of Somalia’s capital Mogadishu, the meteorite (known as ‘Nightfall’ by discoverers in the field) was discovered in 2020. However, locals in the area knew: The rock dates back at least five generations to he seven generations ago, reports The Meteoritical Society in its list of meteorite databases.

“About 15 km northwest of El Ali, camel herders knew of the metal-looking rocks and used them as anvils to sharpen their knives,” the list says.

In September 2019, an artisanal opal miner recognized a ‘strange stone’ and sent a sample to Kenya for analysis, moving to Mogadishu about a year later, but word of the ‘strange stone’ spread. , the government intervened and national security officials were detained. According to the list, just return the meteorite to the miners who put it up for sale and kept it in the warehouse.

‘We have more to do’

The meteorite’s fate is unknown, but more samples may be provided as researchers continue to study.

“There is still much work to be done here, and more indications that this meteorite is a source of other new minerals,” Hurd said.

Meanwhile, he’s asking what Elkin Stunt Knight and Ellarite can reveal about history of a meteorite.

“What we’re working on now is trying to figure out why these two new minerals are in this rock and not in other rocks,” Herd said, adding that the discovery will help other geologists find these. He added that he hopes to be able to identify the minerals in they may have been overlooked.