Cape York | |
---|---|
Type | Iron |
Structural classification | Octahedrite, medium |
Group | IIIAB |
Composition | 7.58% Ni, 19.2 ppm Ga, 36.0 ppm Ge, 5.0 ppm Ir |
Country | Greenland |
Region | Avannaata |
Coordinates | 76°08′N64°56′W / 76.133°N 64.933°W [1] |
Fall date | A few thousand years ago [2] |
Found date | Prehistoric [2] |
TKW | 58,200 kg [1] |
Related media on Wikimedia Commons |
The Cape York meteorite, also known as the Innaanganeq meteorite, is one of the largest known iron meteorites, classified as a medium octahedrite in chemical group IIIAB. In addition to many small fragments, at least eight large fragments with a total mass of 58 tonnes have been recovered, [2] the largest weighing 31 tonnes (31 long tons; 34 short tons). The meteorite is named after the location where the largest fragment was found: 23 miles (37 km) east of Cape York, in Savissivik, Meteorite Island, Greenland.
The date of the meteorite fall is debated, but was likely within the last few thousand years. [2] It was known to the Inughuit (the local Inuit) for centuries, who used it as a source of meteoritic iron for tools. The first foreigner to reach the meteorite was Robert Peary in 1894, with the assistance of Inuit guides. Large pieces are on display at the American Museum of Natural History and the University of Copenhagen Geological Museum.
The meteorite fell to Earth after the retreat of glaciers from the area. All fragments recovered were found at the surface, partly buried, some on unstable terrain. The largest fragment was recovered in an area where the landscape consists of "flowing" gravel or clay-like sediments on permafrost, indicating that it had been in place for no more than a few thousand years. [2] Other estimates have put the date of the fall as 10,000 years ago. [3]
The iron masses were known to Inuit as Saviksoah (Great Iron, later renamed Ahnighito by Robert Edwin Peary) [4] weighing 31 metric tons (31 long tons; 34 short tons); the Woman, weighing 3 metric tons (3.0 long tons; 3.3 short tons); and the Dog, weighing 400 kilograms (880 lb). [5] For centuries, Inuit living near the meteorites used them as a source of metal for tools and harpoons. [6] [7] The Inuit would work the metal using cold forging—that is, by hammering the metal with stones. Excavations of a Norse farm in 1976 located an arrowhead made of iron from the meteorite, dating from the 11th to 14th century AD; its presence is evidence of Norse journeys to northern Greenland. [2] Other pieces of Cape York meteoritic iron dating prior to 1450 (i.e. before the Little Ice Age) have been found throughout the Arctic Archipelago and on the North American mainland, and are evidence of an extensive Thule culture trade network [8] : 52 which supplied iron to First Nations peoples prior to European contact. [8] : 105
In 1818, the British First Ross Expedition (led by Captain John Ross) made contact with Inuit on the northern shore of Melville Bay, who stated they had settled in the area to exploit a nearby source of iron. [2] The Inuit described the location of this iron, but poor weather and sea ice prevented Ross from investigating further. [2] Ross correctly surmised that the large iron rocks described by the Inuit were meteorites, and purchased several tools with blades made of the meteoritic iron. [2]
Between 1818 and 1883, five further expeditions to the area were mounted by Britain, Sweden, and Denmark, which all failed to find the source of the iron. [2] Only in 1894 did a Western explorer reach the meteorite: Robert E. Peary, of the US Navy. [2] Peary enlisted the help of a local Inuit guide, who brought him to Saviksoah Island, just off northern Greenland's Cape York. Peary dedicated three years[ citation needed ] to planning and executing the removal of the meteorite, a process which required the building of a short railroad.[ citation needed ] Peary sold the pieces for $40,000 (equivalent to $1.41 million in 2022 [9] ) to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where they are still on display. The 3.4-by-2.1-by-1.7-metre (11.2 ft × 6.9 ft × 5.6 ft) piece named Ahnighito is on display in the Arthur Ross Hall of the American Museum of Natural History. Ahnighito is the second-heaviest meteorite to have been relocated. It is so heavy that it was necessary to build its display stand so that the supports reached directly to the bedrock below the museum. [10]
Peary has received significant criticism for his removal of the meteorite and treatment of the Inuit (including Minik Wallace). During his expedition to retrieve the meteorite, Peary convinced six Inughuit Greenlandic Inuit people ("three men, one woman, a boy, and a girl") to travel with him for study at the American Museum of Natural History in the United States, where four died within a few months. [11]
In 1963, a fourth major piece of the Cape York meteorite was discovered by Vagn Buchwald on Agpalilik peninsula. [5] The Agpalilik meteorite , also known as the Man, weighs about 20 metric tons (20 long tons; 22 short tons), and it is currently on display in the Geological Museum of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Other smaller pieces have also been found, such as the 3 metric tons (3.0 long tons; 3.3 short tons) Savik I meteorite found in 1911 and the 250 kilograms (550 lb) Tunorput fragment found in 1984. Surveys of the area with a magnetometer in 2012 and georadar in 2014 found no evidence of further large iron fragments, either buried or on the surface. [2]
Each of the most important fragments of Cape York has its own name (listed in order of discovery date by foreigners):
It is an iron meteorite (medium octahedrite) and belongs to the chemical group IIIAB. [1] There are abundant elongated troilite nodules. The troilite nodules contain inclusions of chromite, sulfides, phosphates, silica and copper. The rare nitride mineral carlsbergite (CrN) occurs within the matrix of the metal phase. Graphite was not observed and the nitrogen isotopes are in disequilibrium. [14] The meteoric iron is identifiable by a very high nickel content. [15]
Knud Johan Victor Rasmussen was a Greenlandic-Danish polar explorer and anthropologist. He has been called the "father of Eskimology" and was the first European to cross the Northwest Passage via dog sled. He remains well known in Greenland, Denmark and among Canadian Inuit.
Robert Edwin Peary Sr. was an American explorer and officer in the United States Navy who made several expeditions to the Arctic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is best known for, in April 1909, leading an expedition that claimed to be the first to have reached the geographic North Pole.
Ellesmere Island is Canada's northernmost and third largest island, and the tenth largest in the world. It comprises an area of 196,236 km2 (75,767 sq mi), slightly smaller than Great Britain, and the total length of the island is 830 km (520 mi).
Qaanaaq, formerly known as Thule or New Thule, is the main town in the northern part of the Avannaata municipality in northwestern Greenland. It is one of the northernmost towns in the world. The inhabitants of Qaanaaq speak the local Inuktun language and many also speak Kalaallisut and Danish. The town has a population of 646 as of 2020. The population was forcibly relocated from its former, traditional home, which was expropriated for the construction of a United States Air Force base in 1953.
The Thule or proto-Inuit were the ancestors of all modern Inuit. They developed in coastal Alaska by the year 1000 and expanded eastward across northern Canada, reaching Greenland by the 13th century. In the process, they replaced people of the earlier Dorset culture that had previously inhabited the region. The appellation "Thule" originates from the location of Thule in northwest Greenland, facing Canada, where the archaeological remains of the people were first found at Comer's Midden.
Campo del Cielo refers to a group of iron meteorites and the area in Argentina where they were found. The site straddles the provinces of Chaco and Santiago del Estero, located 1,000 kilometers (620 mi) north-northwest of Buenos Aires, Argentina and approximately 500 kilometres (310 mi) southwest of Asunción, Paraguay. The crater field covers 18.5 by 3 kilometres and contains at least 26 craters, the largest being 115 by 91 metres.
Meteoric iron, sometimes meteoritic iron, is a native metal and early-universe protoplanetary-disk remnant found in meteorites and made from the elements iron and nickel, mainly in the form of the mineral phases kamacite and taenite. Meteoric iron makes up the bulk of iron meteorites but is also found in other meteorites. Apart from minor amounts of telluric iron, meteoric iron is the only naturally occurring native metal of the element iron on the Earth's surface.
Ataxites are a structural class of iron meteorites with a high nickel content and show no Widmanstätten patterns upon etching.
Cape York is a cape on the northwestern coast of Greenland, in northern Baffin Bay.
The pallasites are a class of stony–iron meteorite. They are relatively rare, and can be distinguished by the presence of large olivine crystal inclusions in the ferro-nickel matrix.
Iron meteorites, also called siderites or ferrous meteorites, are a type of meteorite that consist overwhelmingly of an iron–nickel alloy known as meteoric iron that usually consists of two mineral phases: kamacite and taenite. Most iron meteorites originate from cores of planetesimals, with the exception of the IIE iron meteorite group
Savissivik or Havighivik (Inuktun) is a settlement in the Avannaata municipality in northern Greenland. Located on Meteorite Island, off the northern shores of Melville Bay, the settlement had 55 inhabitants in 2020.
The Inughuit, or the Smith Sound Inuit, historically Arctic Highlanders or Polar Eskimos, are Greenlandic Inuit. They are the northernmost group of Inuit and the northernmost people in North America, living in Greenland. Inughuit make up about 1% of the population of Greenland.
Comer's Midden was a 1916 archaeological excavation site near Thule, north of Mt. Dundas in North Star Bay in northern Greenland. It is the find after which the Thule culture was named. The site was first excavated in 1916 by whaling Captain George Comer, ice master of the Crocker Land Expedition's relief team, and of members of Knud Rasmussen's Second Danish Thule Expedition who were in the area charting the North Greenland coast.
Mbozi is an ungrouped iron meteorite found in Tanzania. It is one of the world's largest meteorites, variously estimated as the fourth-largest to the eighth-largest, it is located near the city of Mbeya in Tanzania's southern highlands. The meteorite is 3 metres (9.8 ft) long, 1 metre high, and weighs an estimated 16 metric tons.
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Meteorite Island is an island in Baffin Bay, in Avannaata municipality, off NW Greenland.