Sample No: LEW88677

Location: Lewis Cliff

Field Number: 6133

Dimensions (cm): 0.4 x 0.6 x 0.9

Weight (g): 0.6

Meteorite Type: Fragment of meteoritic iron of unknown pedigree.

Macroscopic Description: Roy S. Clarke. Jr.

This pea-shaped metallic specimen has a reddish brown weathering coating indicating fairly severe terrestrial corrosion. However, a small lip around part of the specimen is clearly an accumulation of fusion crust at an anterior/posterior surface junction of a specimen that experienced oriented flight in the atmosphere. Thin streamers of melt crust flowed from the anterior surface, accumulating and forming the lip at the join of the surfaces.

Polished Section (,1): Roy S. Clarke. Jr..

A 40 mg median slice was taken perpendicular to the plane of the lip joining the two surfaces, resulting in butts of 189 mg and 306 mg. A polished section 0.5 x 0.35 mm survived section preparation. Several small areas of terrestrial corrosion invade the metal, but it is otherwise a uniform area of kamacite transformed by severe atmospheric heating to α2. At the end of the section corresponding to the accumulation lip, a rim of melt crust is present tapering from 0.4 mm at the anterior surface to 0.2 mm on the posterior surface. An electron microprobe traverse across the interior metal revealed a uniform composition: 5.1 wt% Ni, 0.33 wt% Co, and 0.24 wt% P. The Ni value is too low to connect this fragment with a particular iron meteorite group, and the high P, apparently in solution in the metal, probably represents schreibersite dissolved during heating. These data establish the meteoritic origin of the specimen but are insufficient to establish the class of meteorite from which it came. It is most likely from a low Ni area of a coarse-structured iron or stony-iron parent body.