[meteorite-list] Meteorite unclassified

[Martin Altmann]

"Anybody else?"

Well Anne,

another Martin, who grew meanwhile as old as the mountains, while yo're elder than them..
To me your attack on Benzaki sounds like an old familiar echo from the past.
Those early years of the beginning desert rush, when Sahara finds were disregarded as inferior to the "classic" meteorites and with them, often enough, the Moroccan dealers in a way, which the "woke" societies today would address as racist.
Some dealer were afraid to learn something new or afraid of the new looming competition, some collectors saw the elitist character of their collecting-passion endangered...

Set aside, that you never had cut open all these thousands of small Gao-Guenies, Grandseigneur Carion had collected, neither the Tatahouines...
(I remember, that once I cut a Gao, which turned out to be such a remarkable melt,
that I wasn't sure whether it belonged to that fall).
That question was hundredfold discussed on this list here.

Anne, you know exactly how the NWA-trade works. The Moroccan dealers bundle all finds from the whole Sahara, and of course they have developed an expertise in judging the possible types, cause their own wealth is at stake.
And then you have - although I confess, that I haven't much insight anymore, cause I quit meteorites years ago - today it's a confusing mess with all the social media channels -
-well, at least at my active times, you had a hinge between the Moroccan dealers and the collector.
This hinge were/are the well-known meteorite dealers, Europeans and Americans mostly, and some advanced collectors. They purchase the stones at their very own risk in Morocco or at fairs and take care for a proper classification afterwards.
If they go wrong with their guesses - bad luck for them, but that's the game.

Of course you have colleagues from Morocco, which let their meteorites classify,
for instance the unforgotten Hmani senior, now his son....but Anne, how should Dr.Chennaoui handle a thousand+ classifications per year?

"Harmfull for science"
Rhett, Anne - are you kidding us?
The IMCA linked the sites of Dr.Irving and Dr.Korotev, who meticously keep track of the Martian and lunar meteorites.
How short would be their lists without the hot desert finds?
That system works excellently. 
Within only a few years the NWAs overtrumped even the Antarctic campaigns regarding number of unpaired new material of all classes, the find weights and the diversity of types - and that all without charging a bill to the taxpayer and an with an easy access to the materials for scientists and collectors. 
The NWA-complex is together with the Antarctic searchs the greatest achievement in the history of meteorites.

And Rhett, not the rare type lost because of misrepresentation or lacking classification is the problem, but the rare stone remaining unfound in the desert!
You both forget, before Dr.Rubin can craft his thin sections and can insert a sample in his wondrous machines, he needs the very meteorite in his hands.

Imagine, all the people.. Imagine, Anne, we would have to play the meteorite market theatre without the desert finds and only with "classic" meteorites?
Roughly 3000 locations, whereof only a few hundred would be available at all.
Let me take a look at my lists from the year when NWA 001 and NWA 002 hit the stage.
CO3s, there was only Kainsaz at 60$/g on average.
Anne, not everyone is able to afford your price level. Without the desert finds and the grown numbers of collectors during the internet-age - meteorites would be unaffordable for the most of us. And what the crushing mill of the asteroid belt hadn't accomplished in 4 billion years, would happen in decades. The samples would undergo an atomization, smaller and smaller crumbs.
Nowadays everyone can take part in this fascinating occupation - even Moon is available at 50bucks a gram.
We owe a lot to the Moroccan meteorite community.

And Anne, when you someday will enter the Meteorite Walhalla you'll find there the statues of an allegory of the unknown searcher in the Sahara and another of the Moroccan dealer.
Both on higher pedestals than Nininger or Ward or whatever idol you're venerating today.

Such a fuss about a forgotten "likely, possible, probably, imho"...
...no offense meant..
That said, I'm creeping back into my crypt.

Martin