Meteorite collection

Meteorites are extraterrestrial rocks from our Solar System. They bear witness to the formation and evolution of planets. The Muséum’s meteorite collection contains over 5400 specimens and preparations with samples of about 1,600 individual meteorites. It ranks fifth worldwide in terms of observed falls (more than 500).

Presentation

Most meteorites are fragments of asteroids, small bodies located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. However, a non-negligible proportion of the meteorites (a few percent) comes from so-called “planetary” bodies like Mars, the Moon or Vesta. Some rare meteorites come from comets.

The most primitive meteorites (chondrites) enable us to study the various stages of the formation of the sun and planets; this process began 4.5 billion years ago in a gigantic cloud of gas and dust. Differentiated meteorites provide a record of the evolution of the most massive rock bodies in our solar system, like Mars or the Moon.

The collection also includes samples of all falls registered in France so far (more than 60), some of which (Ornans, Aubres, etc.) define types.

History

Until the end of the 18th century, meteorites were objects of fear or superstition. The Ensisheim meteorite (1492), the first European fall from which a sample has been preserved, was chained up in the church of this small village in Alsace for several centuries – until revolutionaries liberated it in 1793. In 1794, a German scientist, Ernst Chladni (1756-1827), suggested that meteorites might be bodies foreign to our planet. Yet it was not until the chemical and mineralogical studies of Edward Howard (1774-1816) and Jacques Louis de Bournon (1751-1825) and the L’Aigle fall (in Lower Normandy) in 1803 that his bold theories gained credence in the European scientific community.

The first meteorites to join the collection of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle come from the personal collection of René Just Haüy (1743-1822). Pierre-Louis Antoine Cordier (1777–1861) drew up the first meteorite catalogue in 1843 (27 specimens). When he died in 1861, the Muséum’s collection contained 78 meteorites. The work of his successor to the Muséum geology chair was essential to the collection’s increase. Gabriel-Auguste Daubrée (1814-1896) first gathered together the meteorites that had been dispersed across several laboratories and through donations, purchases and exchanges, put the collection above 1000 specimens. Under Stanislas Meunier (1843-1925) and Alfred Lacroix (1863-1948), this total increased threefold.

Nowadays, the collection is growing at an average rate of a dozen samples per year, through purchases and donations. Systematics research campaigns in the Atacama Desert (Chile) have also added tens of specimens to the collection.

Research

Each year, a few tens of specimens are entrusted to various institutions for scientific or artistic exhibitions. A hundred or so samples are also loaned or donated for scientific purposes to researchers in France or abroad.

At the Museum itself, research is carried out using high-tech instruments, such as the nanoSIMS, is based around chondrites and Martian meteorites in particular. The former enable us to understand the formation of the sun and the planets, the latter the geological evolution of the planet Mars. 

Contact

Matthieu Gounelle, Conservation officer for the meteorites collection :
matthieu.gounelle [@] mnhn.fr

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