Why this rock is probably not a meteorite:
It is a meteorite. I admit that if someone
had sent me this photo blind I would have thought it to be an unlikely
candidate for a meteorite. The color is OK, but it's angular with
minimal fusion crust. The meteor broke apart in the atmosphere and
this
is but one piece. The meteorite, a shocked L5 chondrite, is a breccia.
The light areas are large clasts, the dark areas are matrix of the
same material that melted and which contains many fine veins of sulfide.
Up close (not visible in this photo) one can see chondrules in the
clasts, which would be the most obvious evidence that it was a meteorite.
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What is it?
This is one of the Park
Forest (Illinois) stones.
See Simon
et al. (2004) The fall, recovery, and classification of the Park Forest meteorite. Meteoritics
and Planetary Science, vol. 39, no. 4, p. 625-634.
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