VALERA METEORITE — LARGE END PIECE OF THE ONLY DOCUMENTED KILLER METEORITE — STEAKS FOR DINNER
L5
Trujillo, Venezuela

On the evening of October 15, 1972 farmhands in Trujillo, Venezuela were startled by an inexplicable sonic boom. The next day a large, unusual rock was found alongside the carcass of a crushed cow. It was clear to the owner of the farm, physician Dr. Argimiro Gonzalez, a meteorite impact occurred, but he didn’t think anything of it, as it seemed reasonable to him that such impacts would periodically result in fatalities. The small boulder was set aside and used as a doorstop. Many years later scientists confirmed Dr. Gonzalez’ presumption—the boulder was indeed a stone meteorite. What Dr. Gonzalez did not know and could not have imagined was that this is the first and only documented fatal meteorite impact. When Dr. Ignacio Ferrin, an astronomer at the University of the Andes, learned of this event, he visited the Gonzalez estate and was informed how to reach a farmhand who was present at the time of impact. Ferrin purchased Valera— just one of only three Venezuelan meteorites, and located the farmhand who provided an official declaration in an affidavit notarized by the Ministry of Justice—a copy of which is provided with this offering:

I, Juan Dionicio Delgado, Venezuelan, identified by the National Identity Document No. 5.030.450, hereby declare in this document that at the end of 1972, I was visiting the farm “El Tinajero” owned by Argimiro Gonzalez, deceased, which was located at the boundary of the states of Barinas and Trujillo. It was past midnight when we were talking, and there was a strange noise. When we went out to investigate due to the dark of the night we saw nothing. But the next morning a worker came to say that there was a cow killed under strange circumstances. When we went to investigate we found that the cow had been killed by a stone that presumably fell from the sky the night before, causing the noise we had been unable to explain. The stone, broken in several pieces, was kept by Dr. Gonzalez, while the cow was eaten over the following days. These are the facts, as expressed in Barinas, the eleventh day of January 2001.

Juan Delgado

This is the largest specimen of Valera available at a public offering. There are three cut surfaces and the reverse is covered with sought-after fusion crust (the telltale evidence of a meteorite’s fiery plunge through Earth’s atmosphere). The multi-hued matrix is chock full of chondrules (spherical inclusions of silica) and seemingly dusted with hundreds of variously sized metallic grains—attributes that are diagnostic in the identification of stone meteorites. Valera is also distinguished by the presence of superficial fissures (see lot 30) and this select end piece evidences this characteristic as well. This is an important example of one of the more unusual and now fabled extraterrestrial visitations on record. 79 x 94mm x 44mm (3.75 x 3.0 x 1.75 inches) and 757 grams (1.75 pounds).

Estimate: $7,000 - 9,500