Achondrite Diogenite
Fell at 1:30 am ,June 27,1931,near village of Foum-Tataouine,south-Tunisian.
The explosion and the intense flash woke up the entire population and also the French military garrison.

The next day, French legionnaires and local Bedouins recovered at 4 km north-east of the village nearly 12 kg of fragments,numerous very small fragments fell over a radius of 500 m ,which were collected and sent to the Natural History Museum of Paris.The largest fragments did not exceed 2 kg.
Alfred Lacroix, a famous French mineralogist, petrographer, and geologist,professor & curator of the mineralogy collection of the French museum, studied this meteorite, and published a study on it and a comparison of the Tataouine meteorite with previously known diogenites.
(cf Bulletin de Minéralogie Année 1932 55-3-6 pp. 101-122)

In 1992, Dr. Alain Carion, accompanied by his son Louis, undertook to find the places where the French military had found the meteorite in the desert, and found many pieces of the meteorite, which brought the total of samples found for this meteorite to 13.5 kg.

Most Diogenites and all 11 Diogenite falls are pyroxenites compositionally dominated by orthopyroxene (~90 vol%), usually accompanied by plus minor amounts of various silicates and opaques. Unlike most other diogenites, however, Tatahouine's dominant pyroxene is composed mostly of numerous large single, usually seemingly unfragmented crystals of orthopyroxene. Closer inspection reveals, however, that many crystals have been partially deformed by shock and then subsequently reequilibrated and annealed. The Tatathouine's mineral assemblage is composed of very ancient material (~4.5 billion years). However, a moderately 'young' ~4.4 billion years Rb-Sr age suggests that the formation epoch itself was accompanied by almost simultaneous intense shock event(s) which would have interrupted any well-defined simple formational epoch.

Tatahouine has also attracted some attention due to the detection of calcite and carbonate weathering products in samples recovered six decades after the fall. Some of the minerals may be biogenic. All this suggests that a 'well-preserved' meteorite in a hot, dry desert is not as impervious to alteration as first impressions might suggest.

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References