Meteorite gallery

Dalgaranga
Mesosiderite (A)
Found in 1923
Western Australia

Notice: The following text is based on an article published in The Mineralogist by Huss (1962a).

The Dalgaranga meteorite crater (c. 20 m in diameter and 3 m deep) was first described by Dr. Edward S. Simpson (Simpson, 1938). His report stated that the crater had first been seen by G. E. Willard, manager of the Dalgaranga Station (ranch) in 1923. Simpson did not visit the crater and only quoted Willard who also sent him a 42-gram meteoritic fragment. Simpson described it as an iron. No one undertook to visit the site until Harvey. H. Nininger inquired about the crater's location at the Western Australian Museum in Perth in early 1959. An expedition to the Dalgaranga Station followed. New measures of the crater were taken. Neither spheroids nor impactites were found, confirming that the small crater had been formed by a violent fragmentation and not by the explosive vaporization typical of much larger impact structures. During that 2-day search expedition, only 23 small fragments with a total weight of 149 grams were found. Back in the U.S., analysis of the specimens at the American Meteorite Laboratory showed that the Dalgaranga meteorite was in fact a mesosiderite, a far rarer class than irons. Plans were immediately arranged to go back to the Dalgaranga crater. The description of the second 1959 expedition is given by Huss (1962b). Nininger (1972) indicates that he and Glenn Huss together found 207 rather small specimens during that expedition. The Tricottet Collection owns two specimens from the Dalgaranga meteorite, most probably found during one of the two 1959 expeditions.

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