Why go back to the Davis-Ward icefields?  Don’t you have enough meteorites from (insert your favorite icefield name here)?

That’s not the most common question we get here at ANSMET central, but it just might be the most important to answer (particularly during funding season).  Earlier today Dr. Kevin Righter,  Curator of the Antarctic Meteorites at NASA’s Johnson Space Center,  provided a very compelling answer that I’d like to share with you.

Not only is Kevin the curator at JSC, but he’s also a veteran of our fieldwork,  as invested in ANSMET’s overall value to the science community as anyone can be, and (like many of us), he’s more than a little bit nuts about all the amazing things meteorites can tell us.   In preparation for this year’s season at the Davis-Ward icefields,  He compiled a presentation detailing many of the amazing finds from that site made during our previous six visits.  His target audience was this year’s field party,  but I found his presentation really absorbing and promplty got his permission to share it with you.    Links to that presentation can be found at the bottom of this page in both high- and low-resolution (for those with lower bandwidth).

Kevin’s presentation may be a little high level for those of you with limited background in meteoritics,  but even if you’re not familiar with all the terms and kinds of data he provides, it’s a great excuse to learn a little bit more about rocks from space, particularly the amazing variety of strange and (dare I say it) unique specimens recovered from Davis Ward so far.  These include an absolutely unique rock from the asteroid 4 Vesta that includes geological contacts and quartz-rich lithologies;  pieces of the Moon; ungrouped achondrites and irons; rare chondrites; impact melts;  and samples of shower falls that include some relatively rare primitive CO3 chondrites.

A blog page doesn’t offer the scale needed to teach meteorite petrology or geochemistry, certainly not to the depth seen in Kevin’s presentation, so instead let me simply provide the links below.

DOM highlights (full sized, 6.2 MB)

DOM highlights (lower resolution, 2.1 MB)

Enjoy to whatever depth you can-  and Kevin’s contact information is available elsewhere on our site (under the “Links” tab) , so please feel free to engage with him if you want to learn more.

NOTE:  The meteorite specimens recovered from the Davis Ward icefields bear the prefix DOM for historical reasons. 30+ years ago (when the area was first visited by ANSMET) computerized databases were new challenge and simplicity sometimes won out over more complicated solutions. This resulted in the DOM prefix (after the nearby Dominion Range , admittedly a DOMinant feature) being used for several distinct icefields in the region.   ANSMET regrets the confusion caused by this awkward namey situation, even though we had absolutely nothing to do with it and can’t do anything about it.  

-posted by Ralph from underneath the lake effect near Cleveland OH.