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Recommended classifications

Recommended classes in the Meteoritical Bulletin Database are assigned by the database editor. In most cases, this is based on the most recent classification that appears in either the Catalogue of Meteorites, MetBase, the US Antarctic Meteorite Newsletter, the Japanese Meteorite Newsletter, or the Meteoritical Bulletin. However, in a few cases it reflects differences of opinion about the proper way to classify the meteorite. The nomenclature used may also be modified by the editor to conform to an internally consistent classification scheme

The recommended classification Relict OC means:

"A relict meteorite that originated as an ordinary chondrite."

The highlighted words are defined as follows:

relict meteorite: A highly altered object that may have a meteoritic origin. These are dominantly (>95%) composed of secondary minerals formed on the body on which the object was found.

ordinary chondrite: A major class of chondrites, distinguished by sub-solar Mg/Si and refractory/Si ratios, oxygen isotope compositions that plot above the terrestrial fractionation line, and a large volume percentage of chondrules, with only 10-15 vol% fine-grained matrix.


Find all meteorites of type: Relict OC