Glorieta Mountain is the most famous American pallasite. In 1965 the "Father of Meteoritics", Dr. Harvey Nininger, befriended a teenaged Steve Schoner and informed him of small meteorites being found on Glorieta Mountain in northern New Mexico. Years later, Schoner's recovery of tiny pallasitic fragments fueled his belief in the existence of a far larger mass. After seventy searches of two to three weeks each over a period of 15 years, Schoner's efforts finally paid off with his recovery of what was the 20-kg main mass — until another meteorite hunter inspired by Schoner found something larger decades later. While about 0.2% of all meteorites are pallasites, Glorieta Mountain is, like Seymchan (see lot 41), more-rare still as it’s a transitional pallasite; some specimens are olivine rich, some olivine poor, and some have no olivine at all. Glorieta Mountain is even rarer because its chemical fingerprint is atypical; among its idiosyncrasies, there is an unusually high abundance of the iron sulfide mineral troilite, and as a result it has been classified as being anomalous.

Schoner — a multi-discipline savant perhaps best known for having saved the only Apollo mission planning maps known to exist when Dr. Eugene Shoemaker inquired after a successful lunar landing “Who wants these before I throw them out?!” — found the specimen now offered in the run-up to locating the 20-kg mass. By determining the density of this specimen (the weight divided by volume as determined by water displacement) it has been determined the mass now offered is olivine poor. As a result of being largely flat on both sides, it’s evident this meteorite split along crystalline planes prior to having struck Earth as scores of tiny thumbprints — an aerodynamic artifact of plunging through Earth’s atmosphere at temperatures in excess of 3000° F are much in evidence. Draped in a warm ochre patina that echoes the New Mexican landscape and accompanied by a custom armature, now offered is a superb example of a legendary American meteorite found by a legendary meteorite hunter.

Christie's would like to thank Dr. Alan E. Rubin at the Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles for his assistance in preparing this catalogue.

168 x 102 x 22mm (6.66 x 4 x 1 in.) and 1037.9 grams (2.25 lbs)