Nakhla Dog Meteorites, Meteorites for Sale, Meteorite

ODESSA
Iron, IAB
Found 1921
Odessa, Texas

This meteorite shower was composed of many thousands of individual meteorites of various sizes that fell over an area of about two square miles. The smaller meteorites, which were by far the most numerous, either came to rest on the earth's surface or at the bottom of shallow impact pits within the soil. There were several large meteoric masses in the shower, however, and these struck the earth with such enormous energy that they penetrated deeply into bedrock and shattered with explosive force, thus producing craters in the earth at the places of impact.

The Odessa meteorites and crater are similar in many ways to the Canyon Diablo meteorites and crater. Not only are they the same type, Group I coarse octahedrite, but they both fell in the prehistoric American Southwest. The crater was discovered in 1921 on limestone plain just outside the city limits of Odessa, in an operating oil field. The first meteoritic iron from Odessa was described in 1922. The Odessa Crater was first recognized in the 1920s as meteoritic in origin by Daniel Barringer, the lawyer-mining engineer that first recognized the origin of the Canyon Diablo Crater.

The Odessa crater is about 165 meters is about 535 feet (165 meters) across. The bottom of the crater is only about 6 feet (2 meters) below the plain and the rim rises only about 6 feet above the plain. The crater is filled with sand to a maximum depth of 30 feet. Four smaller craters were found near the main crater. All of these were completely filled. Efforts to find a large meteorite mass in the crater failed. More than one hundred holes were drilled without result. Thus, scientists hypothesize that the mass disintegrated on impact.

Systematic exploration was done in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Both trenching and drilling were done. The work was of such intensity that well-known meteoriticist Harvey Nininger was led to exclaim "Odesecration" at the sight of the work.

Magnetometer surveys have revealed several small subsidiary craters.

Oklahoma Meteorite Laboratory Provenance with accompanying specimens cards.

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