Daule (Proposed name)

 

Specimen weight: 263 gram endcut from 6.58 kilogram stone.

Chondrite, Likely (L5 or 6).

The Daule meteorite fell at ~9:00 am on  23 March, 2008 near the city of Daule in Ecuador.

This meteorite is Ecuador's first meteorite, and a witnessed fall makes if very special.

A loud explosion was heard along the Daule river on Sunday the 23 of March, 2008, and people working in rice paddies outside of Daule heard a sound like artillery shells falling from the sky. Three stones were seen to fall, two were recovered only moments after impact, the third stone landed in about 1.5 meter of water, sending a fountain of water high into the air. This stone is being searched for now as the location in a rice paddy is known. However, one and half year later, finding it could prove difficult. One stone weighing ~5 kilograms was taken from the finder by the police and sent to Quito for study. It remains there, although type specimen has been sent to the United States and the meteorite has been classified, though I don't have this data yet.

I found this meteorite while searching in Spanish on YouTube for videos of the September Argentina fireball. I found a video which turned out to be a newscast showing stones that had fallen a few days before in Daule. I was shocked that news of this fall escaped me for more than one year! When I saw the scientists with a large obvious meteorite, I booked tickets to Ecuador immediately. Being very busy last month, I decided to send Hans Koser to Ecuador to research this meteorite fall while I took care of other projects, including the Grimsby, Ontario meteorite fall in Canada. The day after he arrived in Ecuador, Hans called me and told me that he had acquired the second stone.

Stone #2 weighed 6,580 grams, and was 100% complete. It was seen to fall just outside of a house in a rice paddy, where it punched at least half a meter into the wet mud, then bounced out of the hole ending up nearly 3 meters away. The finder hid the stone in his house, afraid that the police would confiscate the stone as that happened to a boy nearby who found the first stone. The press and military came to the area, and scared the locals. He kept this stone, un-cleaned, in his house for the next year and a half until Hans arrived to the house, led by the boy who found the first stone.

I am partners on the stone with Hans, and we displayed the meteorite at the Munich show last week in Germany. It is now being cut into slices for sale. The main mass has already been sold, and I expect about 2 kilograms total to be for sale.

Video of news report about the meteorite fall and stone recovered by Ecuador government.

Second video of the Daule meteorite fall.

Interestingly is is about a kid who supposedly caught a photo of the fireball, not true as he took the photo a day before the fall. But this is the video that got me the stone!

 

NEWSPAPER links to articles about the Daule meteorite fall

Click here for article.

 

 

 
Hans Koser and myself in Munich, Germany, Oct 31, 09. I am holding the 6.5 kilogram Daule meteorite, stone #2. You can see that it is covered in mud and oxidized by 1.5 year of exposure to the moist Ecuador jungle environment.
Cutting the Daule meteorite in Germany, Nov 2, 09 on a wire saw.

Daule endcut in my collection, 263 gram endcut showing the high metal content of this meteorite.

Daule endcut, 263 grams, showing the spotty fusion crust, identical to the Kunashak meteorite from Russia, both inside and out. This is a very hard meteorite and the fusion crust seems to have spalled off of much of the exterior. This can clearly be seen in the video of the fresh stone in government hands.

A close-up view of the interior of the Daule meteorite. It has a matrix chock full of chondrules of all sizes and areas of metal veins.

Another view of the interior, you can see veining and brecciation in this photo.

This view is of the exterior, showing the very thin fusion crust and effects of a year and a half of weathering due to poor storage.