[meteorite-list] Holbrook Tektites ( Heat Testing of Tektites)

[bernd.pauli at paulinet.de]

Hello Mark, Carl, List,

Mark wrote:

"I have collected a few of the Arizonaites (Saffordites?) in the field and 
when I first saw them, I was fooled into thinking they were tektites. They
look to be solution weathered and I wonder if that in some way removed
the water that normally is in obsidian (?)."

09 Apr 1999, our late tektite expert Darryl Futrell wrote to the MetList:

I have many examples. I found some beauties east of *Safford*, Arizona back in
the 1960s. Three are illustrated in the May 1967 issue of Sky & Telescope. Some
start out as "Apache tears" (Safford site) & others break out of obsidian flows.

Often they become worn down to oval shapes that look like splashform tektites. But
all I have ever seen are banded, whereas splashform tektites all have a contorted
flow structure. Sometimes they even have tektite-like colors, but they are never of
tektite quality & they will eventually devitrify. Photos of two of them are in the
April 1972 Lapidary Journal (by Barnes).

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Best wishes,

Bernd