Brenham Meteorite Full Slice

Pallasite meteorite, PMG-an. Kiowa County, Kansas, first found 1882. Magnificent large full slice with abundant gemstones weighing 2,220 grams (2.2 kilograms) and measuring 533 mm x 279 mm x 4 mm. Andy Warhol’s cliched phrase states that we will eventually all enjoy our own “15 minutes of fame,” but the famous Brenham pallasite would likely disagree; celebrity status has been conferred on this famous space rock multiple times. The inspiring find story was told in a somewhat fictionalized form by Ellis L. Peck in his 1981 book, Space Rocks and Buffalo Grass; a more historically precise version is beautifully recounted by Christopher Cokinos in his excellent book, The Fallen Sky: An Intimate History of Shooting Stars (Penguin, 2009).Eliza Kimberly moved from Iowa to Kansas in 1885, with her husband, and found meteorites in the otherwise vacant fields of their new Midwest farm. As a young girl, Eliza had seen a meteorite in person (assumed to be an example of the Estherville meteorite that fell in Iowa in 1879). She never forgot it and she knew what space rocks looked like. Nobody believed her tale of meteorites on the Kansas farm, some even muttered that she was crazy but, eventually and after years of sustained effort—which involved mailing samples to universities and scientists such as natural history professor, Francis Whittemore Cragin—she was vindicated. She went into the space rock business and became one of the world’s first meteorite dealers.Pioneering meteorite expert and researcher H.H. Nininger, founder of the American Meteorite Laboratory, did important early work at the Brenham site (sometimes called “Havilland Crater” although there is little accepted evidence of a crater) and his finds were recorded in several of his books. Innovative space rock hunter, H.O. Stockwell, with his homemade, wheeled metal detector, dug up a massive 450-kg (990 lbs) Brenham in 1949. At the time, it was known as “The World’s Largest Pallasite.” Many others followed, walking the gently-sloping fields in search of buried extraterrestrial treasure, and visiting the Brenham strewnfield became something of a right of passage for would-be meteorite hunters. Multiple pieces had been found in the 100-plus years since Eliza’s initial discoveries. Surely sometime in the late 1990s, the area was declared “hunted out.” There was ostensibly nothing more to be found. Then, noted modern meteorite hunter, Steve Arnold, made worldwide headline news in 2005 when—employing a custom metal detector, much like Stockwell—he unearthed an enormous 650-kg (1,430 lbs) oriented mass barely a stone’s throw from the site his predecessor’s discovery...but ten feet down in the ground.In 2008, Brenham once again came to prominence when it served as a main location in the pilot episode of Science Channel’s Meteorite Men—a popular and multi-award-winning science/adventure show that starred Steve Arnold and his friend (and Aerolite Meteorites CEO) Geoffrey Notkin. In the pilot episode, Arnold and Notkin recovered two giant Brenham masses, with a combined weight of over 500 pounds. Several additional significant pieces were also found by Arnold and Notkin and this specimen originates from one of them. Notkin wrote in detail about his Brenham expeditions for Meteorite magazine and in his book Rock Star: Adventures of a Meteorite Man (Stanegate Press, 2012).Now the area really has likely been hunted out. The Meteorite Men television show and subsequent attendant notoriety inspired some to copycat Arnold’s hunting techniques; others tried building large detectors that would peer into the underside of Kansas. It is possible or likely that no other large Brenham masses now remain to be found, making this lot all the more desirable.Taken from one of Arnold’s personal finds, made circa 2006, this magnificent full slice is giddily awash in coffee bean-shaped yellow and green extraterrestrial gemstones. Note the large, dark green, and ball-shaped olivine cluster, slightly off from the center. The shape of the slice—reminiscent of a letter “D”—indicates that the original whole mass was oriented, much like Arnold’s record-breaking 650-kg find. It maintained a fixed orientation towards Earth during flight, and the leading edge ablated into a gentle cone shape. So, even after cutting and preparation in the laboratory, the vestiges of this meteorite’s tumultuous flight through our atmosphere can still be seen written into its luminous shape.