Natural History Museum Vienna Displays Mallnitz Meteorite

The find was made during a hike in the Tauerntal in Carinthia. A unique stone with a dark, smooth crust caught the finder's attention on a farm road covered with light limestone near the Jamnigalm. The stone was partially buried in the ground. The biologist and earth scientist noticed it due to its striking features and picked it up.

Mallnitz Meteorite Struck Less Than 10 Years Ago

The stony meteorite is now officially classified and registered in the Meteoritical Bulletin. Detailed analyses of the composition are required for classification, which takes time. According to the guidelines, the meteorite was named after its discovery location, Mallnitz in Carinthia. Mallnitz is an ordinary chondrite of type H5, an iron-rich chondrite altered by high temperatures in the parent body. Such chondrites make up about 85% of the meteorites reported worldwide. An analysis of the radionuclide manganese-54 in the Dresden Felsenkeller laboratory shows that Mallnitz fell to Earth less than 10 years ago.

"Furthermore, based on the decay product cesium-137 - a contamination from the Chernobyl accident of 1986 - it was proven that Mallnitz indeed struck in Europe and was exposed to local weather for some time," explains Dr. Andrea Patzer, curator of the meteorite collection at the NHM Vienna. Future investigations at the Vienna Environmental Research Accelerator (VERA) of the University of Vienna will contribute to reconstructing the original size and duration of Mallnitz's stay in space. The results of the analysis by a consortium of six scientists from six institutions in four countries on the Austrian meteorite Mallnitz are to be published in a scientific journal next year.

Mallnitz Meteorite in the Austria Showcase at the Natural History Museum Vienna

Starting November 5, the Natural History Museum Vienna will display a model of Mallnitz and a polished slice in its Austria showcase in the meteorite hall. The museum possesses one of the largest meteorite collections worldwide, with 10,779 objects from 2,675 meteorites. Only the U.S. National Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Antarctic meteorite collection in Tokyo are larger. The Vienna collection is the oldest of its kind and was awarded as a "Geo-Collection" by the International Union of Geological Sciences in 2024.

(APA/Red)

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