The Wellman (f) Meteorite Recovery

a.k.a. The One that Almost Got Away.

By McCartney Taylor on 08MAY05

The Wellman (f) has finally made it out of the lab!  It has been classified as an unequilabrated H3.5.  The official lab results are as follows:

Memo - Atypical H chondrite texture and chromite composition (cr#=87;fe#86)

This meteorite is my largest recovery to date.  A single stone was plowed up by a cotton farmer ½ mile south of Wellman Texas around 1999 and kept in his garage until he called me in 2004.  He thought it was too damn heavy to be Caliche and kept it out of curiosity.  Frankly, when he called me in October 2004 about a heavy, rusty rock that weighed 37 pounds and magnetic; I was expecting a chunk of hematite.  However, I’ve learned to check any stone that passes the magnet test.

In fact, I almost missed this one due to a minor technical failure.  Before I explain how it was almost missed, you must understand three things:

·       First, it was dark by the time I got to the farmers house and I was tired from 7 hours of driving.

·       Second, the wonderful regmaglyphs you see in the pictures were covered up with Caliche.

·       Third, Texas limestone has wonderful dimples in it looking like regmaglyphs. So in the field thumbprints don’t mean much to me.

I had bought a new grinding wheel for the drill I use.  I like to use a hand drill with a grinding wheel to make a quick, large window into suspect rocks.  My reasoning is that L class meteorites are harder to spot metal flecks in so I want a big window.  However, my new grinding wheel was made of some black material that was softer than the meteorite.  Thus, when I initially made a ‘window’, the grinding wheel substance wore off onto the meteorite making a black smudge and no metal or matrix was visible.  I thought it was magnetite, but a little odd for magnetite.  Wanting to be sure; I struck it with a hammer to break off a piece. I banged on it for a minute, smashing off Caliche then broke off a chip. It was then that I noticed metal in the tiny chip. At that instant in time when it went through my head this was a meteorite, I simply thought “Holy SH*T!”  I quickly proceeded to recheck with my diamond file and finally put my old grinding wheel back on to grind a nice window.

I really can’t describe how jazzed I was for the next few days after the recovery.  The rest of the week was just a blur; I kept thinking that I may never find another that large. 

Later, I realized that the Wellman area had lots of prolific meteorites. Originally, I thought it would pair with one of the other Wellman (a-e) meteorites, but that quickly proved false. Samples were sent to TCU and the Field Museum who possess samples of all the Wellman’s.  Both institutions said no match – go get it microprobed.  So off it went to the lab, and the lab says it is a new one.

Some pictures of the main mass of the Wellman meteorite and recovery are below.  Because a 1cm cube seemed way too small, I used a beer bottle instead…

This is the bottom. I think these are flow lines, but I’m not sure. Can anyone give me a qualified opinion?

Look at all that metal...

A zoom to the cut face shows…

Some of the deeper regmaglyphs…

The 7 hour drive to West Texas is long, an uninteresting.  West Texas is known for cattle, sheep, oil, and cotton.  This scene was interesting and representative of country life, I had to photograph it…

Finally, me with my little monster space rock.  Tired, but happy…

You can’t win them all.  Below is a 2.3kg Plainview that I saw on the same trip as the Wellman. It was found by a small Seed & Feed store owner.  For those of you not familiar with S&F stores, it’s the local store that sells seed for planting crops and feed for animals.  They are great places to ask for farmers who have plowed up something ‘strange’.

He didn’t want to sell it, just reconfirm it was a meteorite. Note the cut corner on the right that the local university did.  Also, that is not my ugly orange table.

Well that’s it!  Hope you enjoyed this quick tale. Good luck hunting!

-mt