[meteorite-list] POP QUIZ answer

[Shawn Alan]

Hello Listers
 
I would like to say thank you for all of you that sent me in your answers this week for the POP QUIZ. I would like to annouce the 10th Lister that sent in the correct answer and that person is Matthew S, he won a  free 65mg Pena Blanca Spring meteorite from Michael I. Casper collection....  Way to go Matthew :)
 
Question:
 
The Meson de Fierro is associated with what meteorite.
 
Answer:
 
Campo del Cielo

History
 
Chladni reasoned that the huge mass of iron that lay in
the flat, powdery soils of the northern Argentine Chaco also
must have fallen from the sky. Well known to the nomadic
peoples of the region, the mass was first seen by Europeans
in 1576 when Capitán Hernán Mexía de Miraval led a small
contingent of Spanish soldiers out of the fortified settlement
of Santiago del Estero on a long, dangerous march to the site
where their guides said they obtained the metal in their
weapons. He reported finding a large mass of iron rising out
of the ground like a great monument, with smaller pieces
lying around it. The Indians said the iron had fallen from the
sky amid raging fires, but de Miraval assumed he had found
the surface exposure of an iron mine. He carried samples
back to Santiago where a blacksmith found it to be iron of
exceptionally high purity.
 
Despite the fact that he had found native metal instead of
iron ore, the Spanish authorities had no interest in developing
an iron mine at that time and place. So de Miraval’s official
records of his discovery were deposited in the Archivo
General de lndias in Seville, where they would lie unread
until the early 1920s (Alvarez 1926). Today, they rank as the
earliest documentation of the finding and sampling of a
meteorite by Europeans in the Americas.
 
Two-hundred years passed before don Bartolomé
Francisco de Maguna, entered the Chaco in 1774 and came
upon what he described as a large, nearly smooth bar or plate
of metal, sloping upward out of the ground. This one soon
became known as “el Mesón de Fierro” (the table of iron).
Great excitement ensued when news came from Madrid that
the metal assayed 80% iron and 20% silver! It seemed that
the Argentine Chacos might be richer than the Andes of Peru!
However, analyses made in Buenos Aires and at the historic
mining locality of Uspallata in the Andes, yielded no silver at
all. One more expedition led by don Francisco de Ibarra in
1779 returned with samples lacking silver. Nevertheless, in
1783 the Viceroy at Buenos Aires sent Lieutenant don
Miguel Rubín de Celis, of the Royal Spanish Navy, to
measure the extent of the ore body and, if it proved
promising, to found a colony at the site. De Celis led 200
been created by natural modes of combustion. Forest fires or
bolts of lightning would be entirely inadequate to melt and
reduce bedrock to metallic iron under any circumstances. And
the Pallas iron was by far too heavy and in too remote a
location to have been created by ancient smelting operations,
which, in any case, should have separated out the yellow
mineral and robbed the metal of its malleability. Chladni
(1794:40) called the yellow component “olivine” before he
ever saw a sample of the Pallas iron. The fusion of the metal,
Chladni said, must have taken place in a fire more intense
than any known on Earth—a fire that, somehow, left it
malleable. Chladni concluded that this “native iron” was
cosmic matter that had heated to incandescence and melted
while plunging through the atmosphere in a fireball.

Source: Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni (1756–1827) and the origins
of modern meteorite research By Ursula B. MARVIN pg19
 
Thank you and till next time
 
Shawn Alan 
IMCA 1633 
eBaystore 
http://shop.ebay.com/photophlow/m.html 


[meteorite-list] POP QUIZ FRIDAYS
Shawn Alan photophlow at yahoo.com 
Fri May 13 17:27:18 EDT 2011 


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Hello Listers 
  
This week has been very interesting on the List I hope this adds to it in a good way for all you meteorite collectors that cant get enough meteorites. 
  
The name of the game, be the 10th Listerite to email me off the List with the correct answer and you will win a free 65mg Pena Blanca Spring meteorite from Michael I. Casper collection. 
  
Question 
  
The Meson de Fierro is associated with what meteorite. 
  
Good luck :) 
  
Shawn Alan 
IMCA 1633 
eBaystore 
http://shop.ebay.com/photophlow/m.html 

  
  





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