Harold (a)        38°21.82’N, 99°58.83’W

Kansas, United States

Find, possible fall: 1890s

Classification: Ordinary chondrite (L6)

History: On May 12, 2012, Paquita Rupp brought three oriented chondrites to a talk being given by CML lab member Dick Pugh at the Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks and Mineral in Hillsboro Oregon. The stones had been given to Ms. Rupp by her grandfather Columbus Dunbar Craven, who had told her these were meteorites he’d picked up on the family farm in Ness County, Kansas after a fall sometime in the 1890s. According to her grandfather, the night sky "turned bright as day" and the next morning he’d picked up a "full bushel basket" of meteorites. Ms. Rupp provided a copy of a map showing the 640 acre Craven Farm located in the south half section 28 and the north half section 32 Township 19 S, Range 24 W in Kansas. Ms. Rupp said that the largest of the three stones had been cut before being given to her, and that she’d had the three stones on a bookshelf for 50 years (as of 2012). Ms. Rupp brought the three stones to Cascadia in June 2012, where they were weighed and given temporary designations of Ness A, Ness B, and Ness C in order of decreasing mass. Ms. Rupp allowed the cutting of slices off the two larger stones and donated those slices to Cascadia for classification.

Physical characteristics: Physical Characteristics: Oriented stone with a dark brown fusion coating. Cut face is medium yellow-brown with indistinct lighter-colored chondrules and visible metal and sulfide.

Petrography: (M. Hutson and A. Ruzicka Cascadia): In thin section, granoblastic texture with indistinct chondrules and yellowish staining visible. Plagioclase greater than 50-100 microns across common, with numerous chromite-plagioclase intergrowths present.

Geochemistry: Mineral compositions and geochemistry: Olivine: Fa_25.1±0.3, N=19. Low-Ca pyroxene: Fs_21.2±0.3Wo_1.6±0.2, N=14.

Classification: L6 chondrite based on mineral chemistry and texture. May be paired with Ness County (1894). Of the two Rupp stones examined by Cascadia, this one (CML 0685) appears to have experienced less shock and greater weathering than the other (CML 0686).

Specimens: Cascadia holds 36.8 g in two pieces, as well as 4 polished thin sections.