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

Kansas, United States

Find, possible fall: 1890s

Classification: Ordinary chondrite (L6)

History: On May 12, 2012m 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-gray fusion coating mottled with dark brown patches. Cut face is light gray with visible metal, sulfide and a few readily delineated chondrules. A black vein approximately 0.3-0.5 mm wide cuts across both faces of two slices removed by Cascadia from the main stone.

Petrography: (M. Hutson and A. Ruzicka, Cascadia): In thin section, texture is dominantly granoblastic with some larger distinct chondrules and many indistinct chondrules. A prominent black vein (<= 0.5 mm in width) filled with drop-formed metal and sulfide cuts across the section. Feldspathic areas are composed of maskelynite.

Geochemistry: Mineral compositions and geochemistry: Olivine: Fa_25.4±0.3, N=22. Low-Ca pyroxene: Fs_21.4±0.4Wo_1.5±0.2, N=20.

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 0686) appears to have experienced greater shock and less weathering than the other (CML 0685).

Specimens: Cascadia holds 24.0 g in three pieces, as well as 2 polished thin sections.