Most Mars shergottite meteorites may be from the 55-kilometre-wide Mojave crater on Mars
There are nearly 150 known meteorites from Mars, about 80 per cent of which are in a group called the shergottites, thought to be pieces of the planet's crust formed from cooling lava. Looking at the way minerals melted and reformed in these rocks, previous studies suggested that shergottites were 600 million years old at most. But Stephanie Werner at the University of Oslo in Norway and her colleagues believe that the rocks are older because they have all come from the same place: the 55-kilometre-wide Mojave crater on Mars, which was carved out of terrain that is 4.3 billion years old. Read more
The Shergotty meteorite is the first example of the shergottite Mars meteorite family. It was a 5-kilogram (11 lb) Martian meteorite which fell to Earth at Shergotty (now Sherghati), in the Gaya district, Bihar, India on 25 August 1865, and was retrieved by witnesses almost immediately. Read more
University of Arizona's principle investigator for the Mars Phoenix Lander, Peter Smith, not only studies Mars but also has a special place in his heart and on his wedding ring for the red planet. He and his wife Dana have two-of-a-kind, specially designed Martian rings that include a red stone to symbolize Mars, two diamonds for its moons Phobos and Demos and a piece of Martian meteorite embedded next to them.
Title: The 2001 Omani-Swiss meteorite search campaign and recovery of Shergottite Sayh Al Uhaymir 094 Authors: Hofmann, B. A. and Gnos, E. and Hauser, M. and Moser, L. and Al Kathiri, A. and Franchi, I. A. (2001)
The 2001 Omani-Swiss meteorite search campaign and recovery of Shergottite Sayh Al Uhaymir 094. In: 64th Annual Meeting of the Meteoritical Society, 10-14 September 2001, Vatican City, Italy.
There are currently 31 known martian meteorites. They have been found on every continent except Australia. Four of them (Shergotty, Zagami, Nahkla and Chassigny) were observed to fall between 1815 and 1962. The 27 meteorites found long after they fell include 11 Antarctic and 16 non-Antarctic samples. The samples vary widely in size, ranging from 12 g to 18 kg, with the smallest samples being several Antarctic samples. The non-Antarctic samples are curated at natural history museums around the world and are provided for research, traded with other museums, or bought and sold by mineral dealers. Even though four samples are falls, they were recovered long before their significance was understood.
'Shergotty' (stone; shergottite achondrite) Shergotty fell in Bihar, India in August 25, 1865 and is curated by the Geological Survey of India in Calcutta. They made significant amounts of Shergotty available for consortium study in the mid-1980s. Shergotty is a fine-grained basalt consisting of 70% zoned pyroxene (pigeonite and augite) and 23% plagioclase glass. It has relatively abundant magnetite (2.5%) which contains oxidised iron. Liquid compositions are found as early melt inclusions in pyroxene cores and late stage mesostasis. The bulk rock composition is not that of a liquid, but of a magma containing excess cogenetic pyroxene. Amphibole was observed in melt inclusions, suggesting that the magma was hydrous. Evidence for shock in Shergotty is so severe that it makes isotopic dating difficult to interpret.