QUE 94281

Lunar Meteorite: Queen Alexandra Range (QUE) 94281

Antarctica

QUE 94281 has an unusual shape and appears to be a small piece of a larger meteorite because fusion crust covers only part of the stone. The fusion crust is visible on the top surface (T, upper left). Like QUE 93069, the fusion crust is vesicular – it contains bubbles because the rock is a regolith breccia. Only lunar meteorites that are regolith breccias have highly vesicular fusion crusts. The bubbles form as the meteor passes through the Earth’s atmosphere and solar-wind implanted gases are released when the exterior melts.

The small cube in the corner is 1 cm on each side. Click on images for enlargement. (From NASA photos S95-14590, S96-00379, S96-00381, and S96-00386)

Several people have looked at these photos and then contacted us saying something like, “I have a rock that looks just like that!” They probably do, but it’s not a lunar meteorite. Many terrestrial basalts and pieces of slag resemble QUE 94281 at first glance, but not upon close inspection. So, if you have a rock that looks like this, it’s just a piece of basalt (like the “lava rock” in a gas barbeque grill) or a piece of slag from some industrial process. See number 68 from “A Photo Gallery of Meteorwrongs” for more discussion.

Above and Below: Figure 1 of Jolliff et al. (1998). Notice that the fusion crust (right edge) is vesicular but the interior of the meteorite is not (compare with meteorwrong number 68)

Above - A backscattered-electron image of a polished chip of QUE94281. Places having the highest mean atomic number (usually iron-rich minerals) appear brightest; those having low the lowest mean atomic number (usually plagioclase and aluminum-rich glass) appear darkest.

Below - Line drawing of major lithologies: LC = lithic clast (small rock fragement), gls = glass clast, Fa = fayalite, Hd = hedenbergite, Cr = crystobalite (a silica mineral), M = metal, v = void. The rectangles mark the location of other figures from Jolliff et al. (1998).

Listed in The Meteoritical Bulletin, No. 79, Meteoritics & Planetary Science 31, A161-A174 (1996)

from Antarctic Meteorite Newsletter, vol. 18, No. 2, 1995

Location: Queen Alexandra Range
Dimensions (cm): 4.0 x 3.1 x 1.0
Weight (g): 23.4 Meteorite Type: Lunar-Basaltic Breccia

Macroscopic Description: Roberta Score and Marilyn Lindstrom

This is a very strange meteorite. It is highly glassy and inhomogeneous. The exterior is black with thick, shiny glass on one side and an irregular, rough surface on the other. The glass is black, conchoidal, vesicular in places, and has melted into many of the abundant cavities. The interior is very inhomogeneous. This meteorite is wedge-shaped, ranging in thickness from 3 mm to 10 mm. At the thin end, the rough black material has small white flecks in it, while the middle region consists of a chaotic aphanitic material. The thick end is a coarse-grained breccia with abundant angular white, yellow, and black mineral and lithic clasts up to 3 mm across. Two 2 mm-thick glassy, vesicular, black veins cut across the different areas. Oxidation is lightly scattered throughout the meteorite. It will be difficult to do detailed sampling of this complex breccia.

Thin Section (,4) Description: Brian Mason

The section shows a microbreccia of pale brown pyroxene and colorless plagioclase clasts, up to 1.2 mm across, in a comminuted groundmass of these minerals. Colorless fusion crust rims part of the section, which is cut by a 1 mm-wide veinlet of vesicular black glass. Pyroxene compositions show a wide range: Wo_4-30, Fs_23-55, En_25-66. Plagioclase composition is An_91-97. A little olivine, Fa_33-36, was analyzed, and one grain of silica polymorph, probably tridymite. Fusion crust composition is SiO₂ 47, Al₂O₃ 16, FeO 13, MgO 9.1, CaO 12, K₂O <0.1, TiO₂ 0.6, MnO 0.2, Na₂O 0.5. The black glass has a similar but somewhat variable composition. The high FeO:MnO ratio indicates a lunar origin, and the meteorite has a composition of a basalt-rich breccia. Its composition appears to be intermediate between those of EET87521 (Geochim. Cosmochim Acta, v. 53, p. 3323, 1989) and Calcalong Creek (Nature, v. 352, p.614, 1991) and very similar to that of Y793274 (Proc. NIPR Symp. Antarct. Meteorites, v. 4, p. 3, 1991).

More Information

Dreibus G., Spettel B., Wlotzka F., Jochum K. P., Schultz L., Weber H. W., and Wänke H. (1996) Chemistry, petrology, and noble gases of basaltic lunar meteorite QUE 94281 (abstract). Meteoritics & Planetary Science 31, A38-A39.

Jolliff B. L., Rockow K. M., and Korotev R. L. (1998) Geochemistry and petrology of lunar meteorite Queen Alexandra Range 94281, a mixed mare and highland regolith breccia, with special emphasis on very-low-Ti mafic components. Meteorit. Planet. Sci. 33, 581-601.

Korotev R. L. (2005) Lunar geochemistry as told by lunar meteorites. Chemie der Erde 65, 297–346.

Korotev R. L., Jolliff B. L., Zeigler R. A., and Haskin L. A. (2003) Compositional constraints on the launch pairing of three brecciated lunar meteorites of basaltic composition, Antarctic Meteorite Research 16, 152–175.

Korotev R. L., Irving A. J., and Bunch T. E. (2008) Keeping up with the lunar meteorites – 2008 (abstract). In Lunar and Planetary Science XXXIX, abstract no. 1209, 39th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, Houston.

Kring D. A., Hill D. H., and Boynton W. V. (1996) A glass-rich view of QUE94281, a new meteoritic sample from a mare region of the Moon (abstract), Lunar Planet. Sci. XXVII, p. 707-708, Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston.

Mikouchi T. (1999) Mineralogy and petrology of a new lunar meteorite EET96008: Lunar basaltic breccia similar to Y-793274, QUE94281 and EET87521 (abstract), In Lunar and Planetary Science 30, abstract #1558, Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston.

Nishiizumi K. and Caffee M. W. (1996) Exposure histories of lunar meteorites Queen Alexandra Range 94281 and 94269 (abstract), In Lunar and Planetary Science 27, p. 959-960, Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston.

Nishiizumi K., Caffee M. W., Jull A. J. T., and Reedy R. C. (1996) Exposure history of lunar meteorite Queen Alexandra Range 93069 and 94269, Meteorit. Planet. Sci. 31, 893-896.

Polnau E. and Eugster O. (1998) Cosmic-ray produced, radiogenic, and solar noble gases in lunar meteorites Queen Alexandra Range 94269 and 94281. Meteorit. Planet. Sci. 33, 313-319.

Terada K., Sasaki Y., and Sano Y. (2006) Ion microprobe U-Pb dating of phosphates in very-low-Ti basaltic breccia (abstract). 69th Annual Meeting of the Meteoritical Society, abstract no. 5129. Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston.

Chemical Classification

Overview | QUE 94281 | Basaltic Lunar Meteorites

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Prepared by:

Randy L. Korotev

Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Washington University in St. Louis

Please don't contact me about the meteorite you think you’ve found until you read this and this.

e-mail: korotev@wustl.edu

Last revised: 14-May-2008