David Hole in 2015 searched for gold or other valuable rocks with a metal detector in Maryborough Regional Park, Australia. He found a heavy reddish stone that was unlike any other. The man took it home, but could not split it.
According to Hole, gold nuggets could have been in the stone. He tried to saw it with an angle grinder, drill it, pour it with acid, but the stone turned out to be very strong and did not give in. Later, geologists found out that it was not just a stone, but a meteorite.
Dermot Henry, a geologist at the Melbourne Museum, confirmed that dimples were carved into the rock: they are formed when a body passes through the planet’s atmosphere. The meteorite was named Maryborough after the city where it was found. Its approximate age is 4.6 billion years.
The researchers described the meteorite as a dense object weighing 17 kg. To saw off a piece of it, they used diamond dusting. After the researchers obtained a sample of the rock, they found that it contained a high percentage of iron, which means it is ordinary H5 chondrite – the most common meteorite.
The authors also observed small crystallized droplets of metallic minerals called chondrules. Researchers have yet to determine the origin of the meteorite and how long it may have been on Earth.
Carbon dating suggests it was on the planet for about 100 to 1,000 years and could have arrived on the planet between 1889 and 1951.
