Elizabeth        42.318°N, 90.221°W

Illinois, USA

Found: 1950s

Classification: Iron meteorite (IAB, ungrouped)

History: The specimen was purchased by an anonymous collector in August 2010 at an estate sale in Elizabeth, Illinois, with an assortment of other unrelated artifacts. The deceased original owner reportedly found it on his local farm in the 1950s.

Physical characteristics: An irregular mass (732 g) with brown weathering patina on most surfaces, except where some hacksaw cuts had been made to reveal the silvery metallic interior. Acid-etched interior surfaces exhibit an oriented intergrowth texture of silver metal and black cohenite-rich regions.

Petrography: A. Irving and S. Kuehner, UWS) Predominantly kamacite with accessory schreibersite and taenite (as "wispy" grains), plus fairly abundant elongate ovoid regions (up to 3 mm long by 1 mm wide) composed of cohenite + low-Ni kamacite + minor low-Ni taenite, which show preferred alignment in several directions. No Widmanstätten pattern was revealed with an iron chloride etch, but the cohenite-rich regions show distinctly as black, partly porous objects.

Geochemistry: Trace elements (G. Chen and C. Herd, UAb) Analysis of a 4 gram portion by ICP-MS using North Chile as internal standard gave: Ni=76.0, Co=5.2 (both mg/g); Cr=13, Cu=170, Ga=93.5, Ge=335, As=6.2, Ir=2.1, Pt=6.4, Au=1.44 (μg/g), Sb =370, Re=200 (both ng/g).

Classification: Iron meteorite (IAB, ungrouped). Chemical data comparisons for possible matches to regional and other common irons were inconclusive.

Specimens: A total of 31.5 g of material is reposited with PSF. The remaining mass remains with the present owner.