[meteorite-list] New Mineral Discovered in D'Orbigny Meteorite: Kuratite

[Ron Baalke]

http://www.sci-news.com/geology/science-kuratite-new-mineral-meteorite-01814.html

Kuratite: New Mineral Discovered in Meteorite
sci-news.com
by Sergio Prostak
March 21, 2014

The stony meteorite D'Orbigny is the source of a newly discovered mineral, 
kuratite. Its name honors Dr Gero Kurat (1938-2009), a world-renowned 
meteorite researcher and long-term head of the Mineralogical-Petrographical 
Department at the Natural History Museum in Vienna, Austria.

[Image]
This image shows a fragment of the D'Orbigny meteorite. Image credit: 
Jon Taylor / CC BY-SA 2.0.

The meteorite D'Orbigny, a 16.55-kg stone mostly covered with dark gray 
fusion crust, was found by a farmer plowing a corn field in July 1979 
in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The object was originally thought to be an 
Indian artifact and it remained on the farm for nearly two decades before 
speculation arose that it might in fact be a meteorite.

Confirmation of it's extraterrestrial status was finally achieved in 2000 
after a sample was analyzed by Dr Kurat and his colleagues.

The meteorite was determined to be an exceedingly rare achondrite known 
as an angrite. It is characterized by prominent vesicles which are rarely 
seen in meteorites.

In 2004, Dr Kurat with co-authors published a paper in the journal Geochimica 
et Cosmochimica Acta, in which they also reported on the occurrence of 
an unidentified iron-aluminum-titanium-silicate in the meteorite D'Orbigny.

[Image]
This is a fasle-color micrograph showing kuratite (Ku) crystals embedded 
in the D'Orbigny meteorite. Image credit: Hwang SL et al.

This unknown mineral phase consisted of very tiny crystals with an average 
diameter of only about 0.01 mm.

Because of the small size of the available material it was very difficult 
to determine all relevant chemical-physical properties, which are required 
for a mineral phase to be accepted as a new mineral.

In a new study, reported at the 45th Lunar and Planetary Conference in 
Houston, Texas, scientists led by Dr Shyh-Lung Hwang of the National Dong 
Hwa University in Hualien, Taiwan, were able to identify the unknown mineral 
as kuratite.