How Morocco Became the Meteorite Hunting Capital of the World
At the world's most renowned meteorite show, in Ensisheim in France, I noticed there were many dealers from Morocco. Unlike most of the Europeans and Americans—who had display cases and labels and books—the Moroccan stalls were minimalistic. Perhaps a white sheet covered with lumps of reddish-brown rocks. A pair of scales. Sometimes a piece of paper with prices per kilo written in biro. It was only back in England that I learned about the Saharan Gold Rush.
Since 1999 the number of meteorites being found in Morocco has exploded. The number officially recognized exceeds a thousand—though this is described by scientists as 'a gross underestimate.' For comparison, the UK has a mere 23 falls and finds.
'You must talk to Hasnaa,' a dealer, Darryl Pitt, wrote to me. 'She has attempted—and has somewhat succeeded—turning the chaos of the North African meteorite trade into something more orderly.' It wasn't the first time her name had come up.
Hasnaa Chennaoui Aoudjehane, a professor at the Hassan II University of Casablanca, is used to being the outsider in the room. At meetings of the Meteoritical Society's Committee for Meteorite Nomenclature, the group tasked with officially naming recognized meteorites, she was, when she was a member, 'the unique representative from any Arab or Muslim country.' (She remains a consultant to the committee.) When I broached the subject of Morocco's exports, she groaned. 'The situation with Moroccan meteorites is insane,' she says. 'It's unethical.'
Towards the end of the last century several factors combined to make Morocco a meteorite hot spot. First, climate and geography. Allowing for the difference in total surface area, a meteorite is as likely to land in the Highlands of Scotland as in the Sahara, but in the former it will be a lot harder to find—the heather, the rocks—and will 'terrestrialize' much more quickly—the rain, the mud, the snow. Most (though not all) meteorites reach Earth with dark fusion crust exteriors. In the Sahara such rocks stand out against the sand.
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Secondly, Morocco already had a network of Western fossil, mineral, and archaeological hunters and dealers, while many Moroccans—members of nomadic groups in particular—were highly skilled in searching for rocks and artifacts in the desert. When I walked with my herd, I looked at the ground,' a nomad explained to a journalist from the Middle East Eye. The stone business, he said, had rescued many nomadic families from poverty.
Thirdly, Morocco's legal and geopolitical situation helped things along. 'We are, thank God, a peaceful country,' Chennaoui says. 'It is something unique in the region.' Here it is (relatively) safe to wander the Saharan sands looking for stones. Furthermore, there was no dedicated regulation of the country's meteorites. If you found a meteorite in Morocco, it was probably yours to do with as you liked.
The American dealer Michael Gilmer places the beginning of the Saharan Gold Rush in the mid-1990s. Foreign dealers quickly discovered that unclassified meteorites could be purchased from Moroccan traders at very low prices, formally analyzed in the West, and sold on for considerable profit.
The town of Erfoud in the southeastern Drâa-Tafilalet region of Morocco, known as 'the gateway to the Sahara,' became a hub for those hoping to make money from meteorites. A visitor will find shops selling meteorites and fossils, some with small ad hoc museums. Some nomads have diversified into taking tourists and collectors out into the desert to search for stones.
Chennaoui is not against the meteorite trade. She has no wish to take away someone's livelihood, and besides, if no one was paid for their meteorites then no one would collect them and they would be lost to the desert. She does, however, 'think it's really unfair that nothing stays in Morocco.' Her dream is that one day the nation will build a permanent national collection of its own.
Not everyone is keen. Some hunters and dealers fear a tightening of regulations on meteorite ownership and export and potential damage to their trade. 'They can put up museums if they want, but not take away our only source of income,' one man told the Financial Times.
For now, Chennaoui is conducting a private rescue mission, using her own money to prevent interesting meteorites being sold abroad. She has turned her collection into a travelling exhibition, currently based in a shopping mall in Casablanca. With more than 17,000 visitors by June 2023, it presents for the first time in Morocco a collection of Moroccan meteorites. 'I want to educate people to be proud,' she says, 'to understand that this is their heritage.'
Since 2004 Chennaoui's university group has been responsible for the fieldwork and documentation for almost all Moroccan falls. They also try to do the same for finds, 'but it's difficult because there are a lot of them.' She has initiated a system for people who think they might have found a meteorite to contact her or other local meteoriticists for verification. She tries to explain that 'even if a meteorite is sold and exported, it should still be recognized as something that was originally from their country.'
Morocco continues to export huge numbers of meteorites, but according to Gilmer, the Saharan Gold Rush is now over. Local finders, realizing how much the middlemen and dealers were making, began demanding fairer compensation. Moroccan traders in the city increased their prices in response. At the same time, dealers noticed that the meteorites they were paying more for were of poorer quality and more weathered. The big, obvious, high-quality meteorites had mostly been picked and sold. A unique, unrepeatable period has come to a close. 'The world only has one region like northwest Africa, where a fortuitous combination of geographical, legal, and climatological forces converged,' Gilmer writes. 'There are no new Moroccos waiting in the wings.'
The Gold Rush may be over but it leaves Morocco forever changed. Arguably Moroccans are now taking charge of their meteorites—whether in the form of nomads demanding fairer compensation or the development of national scientific institutions. 'We have gained scientific credibility in Morocco with laboratories around the world that leave the doors open for us to carry out our analyses and to welcome our students,' Chennaoui says.
Excerpt adapted from The Meteorites: Encounters With Outer Space and Deep Time, by Helen Gordon. Published by Profile Books on February 6, 2025.
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