Fact Sheet
For The
Los Angeles Meteorite

The following paragraph is a draft of what is proposed to appear in the Meteoritical Bulletin 84: Final version, 2000 July, MAPS 35.
http://www.meteoriticalsociety.org/bulletin/mb84.html
Los Angeles (exact find location uncertain)
Los Angeles County, California, USA
Recognized 1999 October 30
Martian basalt (shergottite)
Two stones, weighing 452.6g and 245.4g respectively, were found by Bob Verish in the Mojave Desert, possibly collected ~20 years ago. The specimens went unrecognized in his back yard until he recovered them while he was cleaning out a box of rocks that was part of his rock collection.
Classification and mineralogy (A. Rubin, P. Warren and J. Greenwood, UCLA): a basalt with a texture closely resembling that of the QUE 94201; plagioclase laths, 43.6 vol%, An41Or4 to An58Or1, have been shocked to maskelynite; Ca-pyroxene laths, 37.7 vol%, ranges from Fs45Wo13 to Fs45Wo37 to Fs72Wo24; other mineral modes, 4.9 vol% silica, 4.2 vol% fayalite, 2.4 vol% K-rich felsic glass, 3.5 vol% titanomagnetite, 2.7 vol% Ca phosphate (including whitlockite and chlorapatite), 0.7 vol% pyrrhotite, and 0.2 vol% ilmenite; contains a higher proportion of plagioclase than Shergotty or Zagami, and has pyroxene that is moderately more ferroan than that in QUE 94201.
Specimens: main masses with finder; 30 g, UCLA.
[Houston LPSC references to be added later]




        Any comments would be appreciated.
Robert Verish

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Last Updated: 2006-04-04

since January 7, 2000.