At the 61st Meteoritical Society Meeting held in Dublin, Ireland last week, an announcement was made by Jutta Zipfel that a new Mars meteorite was recovered from the Sahara Desert. If confirmed, this would bring the total number of Mars meteorites to 13. The last recovery of a Mars meteorite was QUE 94201 from the Antarctic in 1994, and the last recovery of a Mars meteorite outside of the Antarctic was from Zagami, Nigeria in 1962. The new Mars meteorite weighs about 2kg and is owned by a private collector, who was not identified. The Sahara meteorite has been tentatively classified as a shergotite, the most common type of Mars meteorite. Detailed analysis is currently underway by European scientists.
Ron Baalke
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