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Special Publications 68

35 Seasons of U.S. Antarctic Meteorites (19762010)

A Pictorial Guide to the Collection

Kevin RighterCatherine M. Corrigan

Timothy J. McCoyRalph P. Harvey

Editors

This work is a copublication between the American Geophysical Union and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

This work is a copublication between the American Geophysical Union and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Published under the aegis of the AGU Publications Committee.

Brooks Hanson, Director of PublicationsRobert van der Hilst, Chair, Publications CommitteeRichard Blakely, Vice Chair, Publications Committee

2015 by the American Geophysical Union, 2000 Florida Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20009For details about the American Geophysical Union, see www.agu.org.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New JerseyPublished simultaneously in Canada

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ISBN: 978-1-118-79832-4

Cover image: A meteorite on the blue ice of the Miller Range, Antarctica, from the 2011-2012 field season. (Antarctic Search for Meteorites Program / Anne Peslier, NASA Johnson Space Center)

Printed in Singapore

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iii

Contents

Preface v

Contributors vii

1 The Origin and Early History of the U.S. Antarctic Search for Meteorites Program (ANSMET)Ursula B. Marvin 1

2 Fieldwork Methods of the U.S. Antarctic Search for Meteorites ProgramRalph P. Harvey, John Schutt, and Jim Karner 23

3 Curation and Allocation of Samples in the U.S. Antarctic Meteorite CollectionKevin Righter, Cecilia E. Satterwhite, Kathleen M. McBride, Catherine M. Corrigan, and Linda C. Welzenbach 43

Pictorial Guide to Selected Meteorites

4 Primitive Asteroids: Expanding the Range of Known Primitive MaterialsMichael K. Weisberg and Kevin Righter 65

5 Achondrites and Irons: Products of Magmatism onStronglyHeatedAsteroidsDavid W. Mittlefehldt and Timothy J. McCoy 79

6 ANSMET Meteorites from the MoonRandy L. Korotev and Ryan A. Zeigler 101

7 Meteorites from Mars, via AntarcticaHarry Y. McSween, Jr., Ralph P. Harvey, and Catherine M. Corrigan 131

8 Meteorite Misfits: Fuzzy Clues to Solar System ProcessesTimothy J. McCoy 145

9 Cosmogenic Nuclides in Antarctic MeteoritesGregory F. Herzog, Marc W. Caffee, and A. J. Timothy Jull 153

10 A Statistical Look at the U.S. Antarctic Meteorite CollectionCatherine M. Corrigan, Linda C. Welzenbach, Kevin Righter, Kathleen M. McBride, Timothy J. McCoy, Ralph P. Harvey, and Cecilia E. Satterwhite 173

Index 189

v

PREFACE

This book was inspired by a great many mysteries and many great people.

All four of us (the editors) are scientists who use meteorites as tools to explore the history of our solar system. At the same time, our roles in the U.S. Antarctic Meteorite program mean we share the goal of preserving and providing these samples to the planetary sciences community so that OTHER scientists can make great discoveries. We are called on to consistently step aside and let others lead the way when (in the field or in the curatorial lab) something fundamentally new or unique comes into view. Fortunately, our understanding of the importance and altruistic nature of this program helps us serve the common good rather than ourselves.

The inherent altruism of the U.S. Antarctic Meteorite program is one of several important legacies of William (Bill) Cassidy, to whom this book is dedicated. In the very earliest days of the programs history, Bill showed astounding foresight, making some counter-intuitive decisions that still seem astonishing today. Immediately following Bills first successes in the field, dozens of museums and institutions began readying themselves to aggressively seek their own share of the Antarctic mete-orite bonanza. Uncompromising competition between these institutions for the extremely limited resources of the U.S. Antarctic Program would almost certainly have led to a relatively modest Antarctic meteorite collection divided among many institutions, available only with dif-ficulty and collected and curated under a wide variety of conditions and protocols.

With his single season of fieldwork giving him only modest advantages, Bill saw what was coming. He could have chosen to join the race and fought to preserve his singular place in U.S. meteoritics. Or he could have simply gathered his specimens, taken them home to the University of Pittsburgh, and worked on them for years. But recog-nizing that the scientific impact of a unified Antarctic meteorite collection could be exponentially larger than what one, or even dozens of institutions, could do on their own, Bill found a way to create an entirely new sci-ence support mechanism. He allied with the two most powerful planetary materials institutions of the time (NASA and the Smithsonian), giving up his privileged position in the program if they would do the same. At the Smithsonian, Brian Mason took up the challenge

of classifying meteorites on an unprecedented scale, undertaking nearly 10,000 classifications and continuing his efforts well into retirement. Roy Clarke Jr. also played a key role in administering the program and in detailed characterization of the small but important subset of iron meteorites. At NASAs Johnson Space Center, Don Bogard (and later Marilyn Lindstrom) served as curators of the newly arrived samples, ensuring adequate facilities for storage and processing of the meteorites and applying lessons learned from Apollo to optimize access to the samples by the scientific community. Together they cre-ated the U.S. Antarctic meteorite collection, a continuous sample return mission still serving science today.

And here we are, more than 20,000 meteorites and almost forty field seasons later. Our predecessors created a program so valuable and so stable that it has become inter-generational; we (the editors) represent a later gen-eration of curators and field team leaders brought up from within the U.S. Antarctic meteorite program. Yet that sense of altruism so firmly established at the beginning remains. Curators and field party members still have no more rights to the samples than anyone else; field teams are made up primarily of volunteers wishing to serve their science, and samples are allocated by a panel of peers. Most importantly, we are still committed to encouraging and expediting the scientific utilization of the Antarctic meteorite samples.

That is our broad goal for this book: to encourage further use of these extraordinary samples. Countless times over the years, particularly during sample alloca-tions, weve recognized that a specific sample or a tidbit of curatorial insight promised potential rewards for some-ones research, if only they knew. The collection is now so large that key samples (both old and new) can be easily overlooked, lost among the hundreds of new sample descriptions published yearly. Following the example set by Cassidy and others, we conceived of this book as a way to add context to the U.S. Antarctic meteorite program and illuminate key collected samples, helping the collec-tion serve the planetary science community to its fullest. Ursula Marvins chapter covers the early history of the program, while chapters by Harvey et al. and Righter et al. describe current field and curatorial practices. Chapters by Weisberg and Righter and Mittlefehldt and McCoy explore the nebular and planetesimal history of

vi PREFACE

our solar system through key specimens, while chapters by Korotev and Zeigler and McS