A COMPLETE SLICE OF A SEYMCHAN METEORITE, Pallasite – PMG Magadan District, Siberia, Russia

This is a complete slice of a meteorite with crystals of olivine and peridot bookending its iron-nickel matrix. A robust Widmanstätten pattern, accented by the presence of schreibersite, dominate the cut surface. The specimen is circumscribed by the natural exterior rim of the larger meteorite mass from which it was cut. A gleaming metallic border framing the cut face of the specimen was masked and polished during preparation, emulating what was the preferred style of museum curatorship in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. This sample originated from the interface of the molten iron core and stony mantle of an asteroid that shattered. Modern cutting and polishing.
183 x 148 x 2 mm. (7¼ x 5¾ x ⅛ in.) and 600 g. (1⅓ lbs)

A choice display of Seymchan’s crystalline fingerprint.
Pallasites are not only rare, representing less than 0.2% of all known meteorites, they originated from the core-mantle boundary of an asteroid that broke apart after an enormously energetic collision. The crystals seen here are the result of small chunks of the stony mantle becoming suspended in the molten metal of an asteroid’s iron-nickel core. The prominent metal latticework is referred to as a Widmanstätten pattern. It is the evidence of a slow cooling rate which provided sufficient time — millions of years — for the two metallic alloys to orient into their crystalline structure. This pattern seen is diagnostic in the identification of an iron meteorite. It was in the 1960s that the first masses of Seymchan were found in a streambed in a part of Siberia made infamous as the remote location of Stalin’s gulags. Identified as meteorites, they were named Seymchan for a nearby town. Unlike most pallasites, the dispersion of olivine crystals in Seymchan is extremely heterogeneous. This unusual presentation features crystals of olivine and its gem-quality counterpart, peridot, at opposite ends of the meteorite.

Christie's would like to thank Dr. Alan E. Rubin at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California, Los Angeles for his assistance in preparing this catalog note.