New Mexico Mineral Symposium — Abstracts

Not all New Mexico visitors from outer space pick Roswell! Many have landed all over the state and continue their visits on a daily basis. However, their trip is one way as avid meteorite collectors of the world refuse to let them return home!

You may question, "Why should meteorites be part of the Mineral Symposium?" Simply put, they are relics of the same material that formed our Earth and solar system eons ago. The materials that formed the minerals we enjoy and collect today were pulled together in the dim past by cosmic forces to create Earth and the other planets in our solar system. This ancient collection of Earth minerals is augmented continually by bombardment with hundreds of tons of "space debris" that settles on our planet daily. There is a size to fit all collecting needs—macro to micro.

This eclectic collection of stellar material that continually pelts Earth is a window to the world man has yet to visit and that we are just beginning to visualize and understand. Our first material from the Moon, Mars, and asteroids came from meteorites. Material from the beginning of our solar system, the most ancient there is, is delivered to Earth daily by the cosmic space shuttle.

These visitors, mostly from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, left over from the creation of our solar system, are controlled by the massive gravity of Jupiter, which acts as Earth's protector. When material does escape and a meteor enters Earth's atmosphere we are entertained with a "shooting star" display and an occasional lucky find. Past visitors have left their mark on Earth in the form of some 150 known impact craters or astroblemes. Some of these like Meteor Crater in Arizona are spectacular, and are great scientific and tourist attractions. Many are old and weathered and hardly recognizable from our terrestrial view. Space views and mapping have helped identify many of these structures, but many event remnants have been completely obliterated by Earth's geologic processes. The cosmic visitor that formed Chicxulub Crater in the Yucatan is thought to be responsible for one of the mass life extinctions on Earth about 65 million years ago. The visitor that created the impact craters at Sikhote-Alain in the USSR in 1947, created affordable and available collecting material that attests to the tremendous forces that accompany our visitors from space.

New Mexico craters are volcanic in origin and are not meteorite impact craters. New Mexico is known, though, for a diverse selection of falls and finds representing the three major classifications of meteorites—stones, irons, and stony-irons. There are about 200 documented New Mexico meteorite falls/finds, each named for a prominent geographic area where it was discovered. Wagon Mound, Chico, Clovis, Glorieta Mountain, Portales, Kenna, Columbus, Socorro, and Oro Grande are a few of the locations represented. Meteorites have been collected in most counties in New Mexico, with a greater representation coming from Roosevelt County. New Mexico ranks above the United States average in material found per million square miles. Several New Mexico pieces can be viewed in the New Mexico Tech Mineral Museum and in the symposium display at Macey Center.

New Mexico is prominently represented in the educational and research arena by the Institute of Meteoritics at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. An in depth and quality public museum, publications, research, web page http://eps.unm.edu/iom, authentification service, and noted personalities make this institution one of the highly regarded centers of meteoritic expertise in the world.

Meteorites, impact breccias, shatter cones, tektites, and other meteorite collectibles are available from many sources. Material sells for less than a dollar to several hundred dollars per gram. Moon rocks are not cheap!

What a thrill to hold and own part of the Moon, or Mars, or an asteroid like Vesta, or material from the beginning of the solar system!