(WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- A Field Museum researcher and her team have made a rare discovery in the Antarctic: a meteorite that’s bigger than many specimens that have been found in Antarctica.
The December trek to the Antarctic to hunt for meteorites was turning into a bust for Dr. Maria Valdes and her team members.
“For the first few days we hadn’t found anything and we were a little bit depressed about this. We made ourselves some cheese fondue on Christmas to make ourselves feel better,” she recalls.
And then they started finding some little meteorites -- four.
“OK, that’s good. Four is good. But then on the last day -- really the last hour -- just as we were about to turn around and go home and call it an expedition, we stumbled on this massive rock just sitting by itself in the middle of a blue ice field.”
It was 17 pounds worth of space rock.
Dr. Valdes says that of the 45,000 meteorites found in Antarctica, only 100 are as big or bigger than the one they found.
She says it’s probably been on Earth for a couple thousand years, at least. It may provide some more answers to questions about the solar system.
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