Abstract
The few discoveries of fossil meteorites have been attributed1 to the ignorance about the appearance of meteorites among palaeontologists and other geologists who examine limestone quarries, coal mines, and other excavations in sedimentary rocks. We now report the first find of a fossil stony meteorite in Ordovician limestone. The meteorite is a chondrite, possibly an H-chondrite, and its terrestrial age is ∼463 Myr. The fine structural details of the chondrules are often extremely well preserved, but the chemical composition and the mineralogy have changed dramatically, chromite being the only primary mineral preserved. The present major minerals are calcite, barite, a Cr–V– ‘phengite’ and a cobaltite-group mineral.
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Thorslund, P., Wickman, F. Middle Ordovician chondrite in fossiliferous limestone from Brunflo, central Sweden. Nature 289, 285–286 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1038/289285a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/289285a0
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