Abstract
Compared with non-Antarctic falls, Antarctic meteorites include many of hitherto rare, unique or unknown type1, such as lunar and putative martian samples2–4. Attention has not previously been paid to the more common sorts of Antarctic meteorites and here we focus on the most frequently encountered, H5 chondrites. We find that compositional differences between Antarctic and non-Antarctic specimens of this class, especially those involving thermally sensitive trace and ultra-trace elements, are so substantial that it seems extremely doubtful that the two sample populations are derived from the same parent population. This implies that the contemporary falls (less than 200 years old) and the substantially older (on average, 300,000 years for Victoria Land) Antarctic meteorites either differ in genetic history or sample different extraterrestrial parent populations, or both.
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Dennison, J., Lingner, D. & Lipschutz, M. Antarctic and non-Antarctic meteorites form different populations. Nature 319, 390–393 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1038/319390a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/319390a0
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