07 July 2009

UK Meteorite News- Meteorites in the NHM 7JUL09

Better Know A Meteorite Collection: Natural History Museum in London, United Kingdom

Written by Linda M. V. Martel
Hawai‘i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology
The Natural History Museum in London, with its combined collections of over 70 million specimens of minerals, fossils, plants and animals and its brilliant public galleries, is also home to first-class scientific research departments. The Mineralogy Department's meteorite collection is one of the world's finest and a focus for scientific discoveries by researchers based at the museum and around the globe. The collection has about 5000 individually registered specimens, collected from every continent, representing just under 2000 distinct meteorites. In the jargon of meteoritics, there are falls and finds. Falls are meteorites that are recovered after eye witness accounts of fireballs and thunderous noises lead to their collection. Finds are meteorites that are found later. The U. K. collection has a significantly large number of meteorite falls, about 600, perhaps the most of any collection. ...
http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/July09/Meteorites.London.Museum.html

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