Superb Etched Meteorite Slice Sweden

Excellent etched slice of a Muonionalustia meteorite showing great Widmanstätten patterning. 

Wonderful addition to a collection, useful for cutting and cabbing as well.

Chem: 91.4% Fe  8.4% Ni  .2% Trace elements

Origin: Sweden

Weight: 45 grams

The Muonionalusta meteorite, meaning "from the beginning of Muonio-river", is a meteorite classified as fine octahedrite, type IVA, which impacted in northern Scandinavia, west of the border between Sweden and Finland, about one million years BCE.

Studies have shown it to be the oldest discovered meteorite impacting the Earth during the Quaternary Period, about one million years ago. It is quite clearly part of the iron core or mantle of a planetoid, which shattered into many pieces upon its fall on our planet.

Since landing on Earth the meteorite has experienced four ice ages. It was unearthed from a glacial moraine in the northern tundra. It has a strongly weathered surface covered with cemented faceted pebbles.

New analysis of this strongly shock-metamorphosed iron meteorite has shown a content of 8.4% nickel and trace amounts of rare elements—0.33 ppm gallium, 0.133 ppm germanium and 1.6 ppm iridium. It also contains the minerals chromite, daubréelite, schreibersite, akaganéite and inclusions of troilite. For the first time, analysis has proved the presence of a form of quartz altered by extremely high pressure—stishovite, probably a pseudomorphosis after tridymite.