Two never-before-seen minerals have been found in a meteorite weighing about 15 tons. The meteorite was discovered in Somalia in 2020 and is the ninth largest ever found, the University of Alberta, Canada has announced.
It was Chris Herd, curator of the university’s meteorite collection, who represented the minerals. While analyzing the space rock samples, he noticed something unusual that caught his eye. He couldn’t immediately identify what it was, so he asked Andrew Locock, head of the university’s electron microprobe laboratory, for help.
“The first day he ran tests he said to me, ‘There are at least two new minerals in there,'” Herd said. quoted by CNN🇧🇷 “It was phenomenal.
The name of one of the minerals – “elaliite” – comes from the space object itself, which has been called the “El Ali” meteorite since it was found near the town of El Ali in central Somalia.
Herd dubbed the second “elkinstantonite” after Lindy Elkins-Tanton, vice president of the Interplanetary Initiative at the University of Arizona.
“Lindy has done a lot of work on how planet cores form and how planet cores form,” Herd said. “It makes sense to name a mineral after you and recognize your contributions to science.”
The approval of the two new minerals by the International Mineralogical Association in November of this year “indicates that the work is solid,” said Oliver Tschauner, a geoscience expert at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
“Every time we find a new mineral, it means the chemistry of the rock was different from what’s been found before,” Herd explained. “Here’s what’s exciting: In this particular meteorite, we have two minerals that are new to science.”
Both minerals are made up of iron phosphates. “The phosphates in iron meteorites are by-products: They are formed through the oxidation of phosphides, which are rare primary components of iron meteorites,” Tschauner said.
The “El Ali” meteorite, from which these new minerals come, will have been sent to China in search of a buyer.
Researchers are still analyzing the minerals to find out what condition the meteorite was in when it formed.
