The biggest piece of Mars on Earth is going up for auction in New York
Sotheby's in New York will be auctioning what's known as NWA 16788 on Wednesday as part of a natural history-themed sale that also includes a juvenile Ceratosaurus dinosaur skeleton that's more than 6 feet (2 meters) tall and nearly 11 feet (3 meters) long.
According to the auction house, the meteorite is believed to have been blown off the surface of Mars by a massive asteroid strike before traveling 140 million miles (225 million kilometers) to Earth, where it crashed into the Sahara. A meteorite hunter found it in Niger in November 2023, Sotheby's says.
The red, brown and gray hunk is about 70% larger than the next largest piece of Mars found on Earth and represents nearly 7% of all the Martian material currently on this planet, Sotheby's says. It measures nearly 15 inches by 11 inches by 6 inches (375 millimeters by 279 millimeters by 152 millimeters).
'This Martian meteorite is the largest piece of Mars we have ever found by a long shot,' Cassandra Hatton, vice chairman for science and natural history at Sotheby's, said in an interview. 'So it's more than double the size of what we previously thought was the largest piece of Mars.'
It is also a rare find. There are only 400 Martian meteorites out of the more than 77,000 officially recognized meteorites found on Earth, Sotheby's says.
Hatton said a small piece of the red planet remnant was removed and sent to a specialized lab that confirmed it is from Mars. It was compared with the distinct chemical composition of Martian meteorites discovered during the Viking space probe that landed on Mars in 1976, she said.
The examination found that it is an 'olivine-microgabbroic shergottite,' a type of Martian rock formed from the slow cooling of Martian magma. It has a course-grained texture and contains the minerals pyroxene and olivine, Sotheby's says.
It also has a glassy surface, likely due to the high heat that burned it when it fell through Earth's atmosphere, Hatton said. 'So that was their first clue that this wasn't just some big rock on the ground,' she said.
The meteorite previously was on exhibit at the Italian Space Agency in Rome. Sotheby's did not disclose the owner.
It's not clear exactly when the meteorite hit Earth, but testing shows it probably happened in recent years, Sotheby's said.
The juvenile Ceratosaurus nasicornis skeleton was found in 1996 near Laramie, Wyoming, at Bone Cabin Quarry, a gold mine for dinosaur bones. Specialists assembled nearly 140 fossil bones with some sculpted materials to recreate the skeleton and mounted it so it's ready to exhibit, Sotheby's says.
The skeleton is believed to be from the late Jurassic period, about 150 million years ago, Sotheby's says. It's auction estimate is $4 million to $6 million.
Ceratosaurus dinosaurs were bipeds with short arms that appear similar to the Tyrannosaurus rex, but smaller. Ceratosaurus dinosaurs could grow up to 25 feet (7.6 meters) long, while the Tyrannosaurs rex could be 40 feet (12 meters) long.
The skeleton was acquired last year by Fossilogic, a Utah-based fossil preparation and mounting company.
Wednesday's auction is part of Sotheby's Geek Week 2025 and features 122 items, including other meteorites, fossils and gem-quality minerals.
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CNN
5 hours ago
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Two meteorites found in the Sahara could be from the solar system's least studied rocky planet, scientists say
Researchers suspect that two meteorites found in the Sahara Desert in 2023 may originally have come from Mercury, which would make them the first identified fragments of the solar system's innermost planet. The least studied and most mysterious of the solar system's rocky planets, Mercury is so close to the sun that exploring it is difficult even for probes. Only two uncrewed spacecraft have visited it to date — Mariner 10, launched in 1973, and MESSENGER, launched in 2004. A third, BepiColombo, is en route and due to enter orbit around the planet in late 2026. Scientists know little about Mercury's geology and composition, and they have never been able to study a fragment of the planet that landed on Earth as a meteorite. In contrast, there are more than 1,100 known samples from the moon and Mars in the database of the Meteoritical Society, an organization that catalogs all known meteorites. These 1,100 meteorites originated as fragments flung from the surfaces of the moon and Mars during asteroid impacts before making their way to Earth after a journey through space. Not every planet is likely to eject fragments of itself Earth-ward during collisions. Though Venus is closer to us than Mars is, its greater gravitational pull and thick atmosphere may prevent the launch of impact debris. But some astronomers believe that Mercury should be capable of generating meteors. 'Based on the amount of lunar and Martian meteorites, we should have around 10 Mercury meteorites, according to dynamical modeling,' said Ben Rider-Stokes, a postdoctoral researcher in achondrite meteorites at the UK's Open University and lead author of a study on the Sahara meteorites, published in June in the journal Icarus. 'However, Mercury is a lot closer to the sun, so anything that's ejected off Mercury also has to escape the sun's gravity to get to us. It is dynamically possible, just a lot harder. No one has confidently identified a meteorite from Mercury as of yet,' he said, adding that no mission thus far has been capable of bringing back physical samples from the planet either. If the two meteorites found in 2023 — named Northwest Africa 15915 (NWA 15915) and Ksar Ghilane 022 (KG 022) — were confirmed to be from Mercury, they would greatly advance scientists' understanding of the planet, according to Rider-Stokes. But he and his coauthors are the first to warn of some inconsistencies in matching those space rocks to what scientists know about Mercury. The biggest is that the fragments appear to have formed about 500 million years earlier than the surface of Mercury itself. However, according to Rider-Stokes, this finding could be based on inaccurate estimates, making a conclusive assessment unlikely. 'Until we return material from Mercury or visit the surface,' he said, 'it will be very difficult to confidently prove, and disprove, a Mercurian origin for these samples.' But there are some compositional clues that suggest the meteorites might have a link to the planet closest to the sun. It's not the first time that known meteorites have been associated with Mercury. The previous best candidate, based on the level of interest it piqued in astronomers, was a fragment called Northwest Africa (NWA) 7325, which was reportedly found in southern Morocco in early 2012. Rider-Stokes said that was the first meteorite to be potentially associated with Mercury: 'It got a lot of attention. A lot of people got very excited about it.' Further analysis, however, showed a richness in chrome at odds with Mercury's predicted surface composition. More recently, astronomers have suggested that a class of meteorites called aubrites — from a small meteorite that landed in 1836 in Aubres, France — might come from Mercury's mantle, the layer below the surface. However, these meteorites lack a chemical compatibility with what astronomers know about the planet's surface, Rider-Stokes said. 'That's what's so exciting about the samples that we studied — they have sort of the perfect chemistry to be representative of Mercury,' he said. Most of what is known about Mercury's surface and composition comes from NASA's MESSENGER probe, which assessed the makeup of the planet's crust from orbit. Both meteorites from the study, which Rider-Stokes analyzed with several instruments including an electron microscope, contain olivine and pyroxene, two iron-poor minerals confirmed by MESSENGER to be present on Mercury. The new analysis also revealed a complete lack of iron in the space rock samples, which is consistent with scientists' assumptions about the planet's surface. However, the meteorites contained only trace amounts of plagioclase, a mineral believed to dominate Mercury's surface. The biggest point of uncertainty, though, is still the meteorites' age. 'They are about 4.5 billion years old,' Rider-Stokes said, 'and most of Mercury's surface is only about 4 billion years old, so there's a 500 million-year difference.' However, he said he thinks this discrepancy is not sufficient to rule out a Mercurian origin, due to the limited reliability of MESSENGER's data, which has been also used to estimate the age of Mercury's surface layer. 'These estimates are based on impact cratering models and not absolute age dating, and therefore may not be entirely accurate,' Rider-Stokes said. 'It doesn't mean that these samples aren't good analogs for regional areas on the surface of Mercury, or the early Mercurian crust that is not visible on the modern surface of Mercury.' 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The primary reason Solomon cited for his doubts is that the meteorites formed much earlier than the best estimates for the ages of rocks now on Mercury's surface. But he said he thinks the samples still hold research value. 'Nonetheless, the two meteorites share many geochemical characteristics with Mercury surface materials, including little to no iron … and the presence of sulfur-rich minerals,' he added. 'These chemical traits have been interpreted to indicate that Mercury formed from precursor materials much more chemically reduced than those that formed Earth and the other inner planets. It may be that remnants of Mercury precursor materials still remain among meteorite parent bodies somewhere in the inner solar system, so the possibility that these two meteorites sample such materials warrants additional study.' 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Rider-Stokes plans to continue the discussion around these meteorites at the annual meeting of the Meteoritical Society, which takes place in Perth this week. 'I'm going to discuss my findings with other academics across the world,' he said. 'At the moment, we can't definitively prove that these aren't from Mercury, so until that can be done, I think these samples will remain a major topic of debate across the planetary science community.'
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9 hours ago
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The biggest piece of Mars on Earth is being auctioned off in New York
A 25-kilogram rock is being auctioned off at Sotheby's New York on Wednesday. It's being listed for a price of $2 million (€1.71 million) to $4 million (€3.42 million). Why so expensive? Well, it's not just any rock. It's the largest piece of Mars ever found on Earth. The Martian rock, known as NWA 16788, will be sold as part of a natural history-themed sale that also includes a juvenile Ceratosaurus dinosaur skeleton that's more than 2 metres tall and nearly 3 metres long. According to the auction house, the meteorite is believed to have been blown off the surface of Mars by a massive asteroid strike before traveling 225 million kilometres to Earth, where it crashed into Africa's Sahara Desert. A meteorite hunter found it in the remote Agadez Region of Niger in November 2023, Sotheby's says. The reddish-brown hunk is about 70% larger than the next largest piece of Mars found on Earth and represents nearly 7% of all the Martian material currently on this planet, Sotheby's says, measuring in at nearly 375 millimetres in length, 279 millimetres in width and 152 millimetres in height. 'This Martian meteorite is the largest piece of Mars we have ever found by a long shot," said Cassandra Hatton, vice chairman for science and natural history at Sotheby's. 'So it's more than double the size of what we previously thought was the largest piece of Mars.' The rock is a super a rare find. There are only 400 Martian meteorites out of the more than 77,000 officially recognised meteorites found on Earth, Sotheby's says. Hatton asserted that a small piece of it was removed to study it and confirm that it is indeed Martian. The study found that it is an 'olivine-micro gabbroic shergottite,' formed from the slow cooling of Martian magma. It has a course-grained texture composed primarily of pyroxene, Maskelynite, and olivine, Sotheby's says. It also has a glassy surface, likely due to the high heat that burned it when it fell through Earth's atmosphere, Hatton said. 'So that was their first clue that this wasn't just some big rock on the ground,' she said. It's not clear exactly when the meteoroid hit Earth, but testing shows it probably happened in recent years, Sotheby's said. Also on auction is the juvenile Ceratosaurus skeleton, which was found in 1996 near Laramie, Wyoming in the United States at Bone Cabin Quarry – a gold mine for dinosaur bones. Specialists assembled nearly 140 fossil bones with some sculpted materials to recreate the skeleton and mounted it so it's ready to exhibit. The skeleton is believed to be from the late Jurassic period, about 150 million years ago, Sotheby's says. It's auction estimate is anywhere between $4 million (€3.42 million) to $6 million (€5.13 million). It's unclear if the items will actually sell at these prices, as such items have never been sold at auction before. Sotheby's says whoever ends up purchasing the incredibly rare items is guaranteed to snag a one of a kind piece of history.
Yahoo
13 hours ago
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Martian rock that crash landed in the Sahara listed to sell for around $2M at auction
A huge and 'incredibly rare' chunk of Mars that crash-landed in the Sahara will go on sale for nearly $2m at auction. Sotheby's in New York is selling the 55-pound rock, named NWA 16788, for upwards of $1.6m, which it says is the largest piece of Mars on Earth. The reddish-brown Martian rock travelled 140 million miles to Earth before it was found by a meteorite hunter in Niger in 2023, according to the auction house. The rock is about 70 per cent larger than the next largest piece of Mars found on Earth and represents nearly 7 per cent of all Martian material currently on the planet, Sotheby's said. 'This Martian meteorite is the largest piece of Mars we have ever found by a long shot,' Cassandra Hatton, vice chairman for science and natural history at Sotheby's, told Fortune. An 11ft long dinosaur has also gone up for sale at the auction house, which is estimated to sell for anywhere between $4m and $6m (EPA) Hatton said the rock was sent off for testing to a specialized lab, which found it to be an 'olivine-microgabbroic shergottite,' a type of rock formed from the slow cooling of magma. It is also a rare find. There are only 400 Martian meteorites out of the more than 77,000 officially recognized meteorites found on Earth, Sotheby's says. It also has a glassy surface, likely due to the high heat it experienced when it fell through Earth's atmosphere, Hatton said. 'So that was their first clue that this wasn't just some big rock on the ground,' she said. It's not clear exactly when the meteorite hit Earth, but testing shows it probably happened in recent years, Sotheby's said. The meteorite was previously on exhibit at the Italian Space Agency in Rome. Sotheby's did not disclose the owner. The juvenile Ceratosaurus nasicornis skeleton was found in 1996 near Laramie, Wyoming, at Bone Cabin Quarry (EPA) Meanwhile, an 11-foot-long dinosaur has also been listed for sale at the auction house this week and is estimated to sell for between $4 million and $6 million. The juvenile Ceratosaurus nasicornis skeleton was found in 1996 near Laramie, Wyoming, at Bone Cabin Quarry. It is believed to be from the late Cretaceous period, approximately 65 million years ago, Sotheby's said. It will go up for sale on Wednesday. Ceratosaurus dinosaurs were bipeds with short arms that appeared similar to the Tyrannosaurus rex, but smaller.
