Section 2 – Iron Meteorite, Tamarugal

Tamarugal, IIIAB, 8.4 kg. This is a large slice of a 320 kg iron meteorite found in Tarapaca, Chile, in 1903. Iron meteorites are composed primarily of alloys of iron and nickel, formed in the cores of parent bodies that were large enough to differentiate into an iron-nickel core, olivine mantle, and rocky crust. When cut and polished, they look just like sheets of metal. However, the square in the center has been etched with acid, which reveals a criss-cross “Widmanstätten pattern” made by interlocking grains of nickel-rich and nickel-poor iron crystals. This sample was part of the Mauroy collection donated to the Specola in 1935.