Toluca is an historic meteorite find from central Mexico. Recognized in 1776, at which time it was being forged into agricultural implements utilizing some of the numerous fragments, as large as 300 pounds (136 kg) recovered in the area. It is classified as a IAB coarse octahedrite, kamacite bandwidth 1.40 ± 0.20 mm, nickel content circa 8.05 weight percent. More recently, Toluca has been placed in the sLL (low gold, low nickel) subgroup of the IAB complex, along with Annaheim, Goose Lake and other irons.

Toluca is one of the numerous large irons known from the western regions of the Americasand it has sundry synonyms, most notably Xiquipilco. Also known as Morelos, Ocatitlan, Tacubaya, Tejupilco, Tennant's Iron, etc. One specimen was for many years mistakenly attributed to a now-discredited Canadian iron named Leeds.

Toluca is one of the most-researched and referenced iron meteorites after Canyon Diablo, the impactor responsible for the Barringer Crater (Meteor Crater) in Arizona. These two are followed in turn by Gibeon, Campo del Cielo, Coahuila, Sikhote-Alin and Hoba. Notably, these seven irons also include some of the largest known meteorites.

Toluca was an early (and ongoing) subject for enquiries into many aspects of mineralogy and geochemistry, such as:

• the occurrence of graphite in meteorites (Farrington, 1901)
• the abundance of platinum group elements (PGE) in meteorites
• occurrence of native copper
• kamacite bandwidth (Goldstein and Short, 1967)
• the presence of silicate inclusions
• iron-nickel alloys such as kamacite and tetrataenite, phosphides, and the silicon content of meteoritic metal (Pack et al. , 2011)

The widespread distribution of Toluca in many meteorite collections has facilitated inclusion of this iron in many surveys of classification, metallography, mineralogy and elemental and isotopic cosmochemistry.

7.5 Kg - SOLD