Lunk

Nice try, Fred...guess again!

Congrats Glenn, you nailed it...good eye!

Okay that's a lot of rocks to look at, so I'll help you out and bring it in a little closer:

Scored a lovely 94 gram stone today in the same general area. This one was only slightly embedded in the surface of the ground and is in much better shape than yesterday's find. This individual stone displays remnant fusion crust with only a couple of chipped areas.

Many meteorite hunters prefer to search for space rocks using only their eyes to spot them on the ground. But when the area is strewn with dark colored terrestrial rocks that can mimic the look of a meteorite, relying on visual clues becomes a tough go. In the photo below, I had just found a stony meteorite exposed on the surface with my metal detector. Test your skills and see if you can spot the chondrite.

Dave, I think the GPZ-19 coil would be great on the south side with its flat, open areas and few obstacles. A guy could cover a lot of ground in a day.

Fred, I figured it's more advantageous to swing th 14" coil since it can fit between a lot more of the boulders than the 19".

It was a beautiful sunny day with a nice breeze in the Yucca Dense Collection Area, formerly known as the Franconia strewn field. A large part of this area has plagued detectorists since meteorites were first discovered here, as the landscape is littered with basalt hot rocks and is completely carpeted with them in some spots. Fortunately the Minelab GPZ 7000 can eliminate the vast majority of them, while still hitting hard on the space rocks. While most of the finds are on the surface, some have become buried over time, like the one I found today at a depth of around 8 inches, or 200 mill. In addition to calcium carbonate deposits forming on the stones's exterior, most of the fusion crust is being stripped away by chemical weathering and the surface metal grains are oxidizing, staining the surrounding matrix a rusty orange. Mass of specimen is 166 grams.

Rub that baby on a file and let's see what's inside!

I used 3M picture hanging strips, so there is a small gap between the coil and skid which allows any dirt and other debris to slide off the skid rather than build up between the spokes - works great.

Tom, you might also give this lab a try; they have a very fast turnaround: New England Meteoritical Services (NEMS) P.O. Box 440 Mendon, MA USA 01756 http://www.meteoritetesting.org/

I got tired of waiting for a skid plate to become available here in the states, so I just cut one out of a cheapo Walmrt storage container and slapped it onto the coil. It's a little softer plastic than polycarbonate, but is thick enough to last forever.

I've noticed even the GPZ 14 coil will false when running the sensitivity high, especially in the high yield /difficult combo. Dialing down the sensitivity will fix the issue.

Thanks for posting the photos Tom. The acid etching you mentioned only works on the solid metal variety of meteorites, so all you need to do is file or grind a window into your specimen and sand it smooth. If your rock is a chondrite without metal grains, the window should show round chondrules similar to the photo: These chondrules are small, typically less than a millimeter in diameter. If there are no chondrules, the only possibility left is an achondrite meteorite. These can only be definitively identified by laboratory chemical, petrologic and petrographic analysis. Here's a list of meteorite testing labs: http://meteorite-identification.com/verification.html Best of luck!

What an awesome day...WTG!

Holy schist that's a huge pile of gold...congrats to you and the claim owner!

Nice nugget Jennifer, you are killing it! You know you are allowed to scream in those videos, right?? Congrats!

They sounded loud and clear Dave, there was no missing 'em!

Back in 2004 I stumbled upon a chondrite sitting on the desert pavement just west of Quartzsite, Arizona. I picked up 16 fragments within an area of 1 square meter. The meteorite was classified as the Diablo Pass L6 ordinary chondrite; details here: https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meteor/metbull.php?sea=Diablo+Pass&sfor=names&ants=&falls=&valids=&stype=contains&lrec=50&map=ge&browse=&country=All&srt=name&categ=All&mblist=All&rect=&phot=&snew=0&pnt=Normal table&code=35516 Diablo Pass main mass: Fast forward to today: I was passing through the area and decided to revisit the site. Someone had toppled the small stone monument I had erected to mark the find location, presumably to look for more pieces of the meteorite. Apparently they missed a few; after removing the monument stones, I proceeded to detect 10 small fragments from the area, many of which display remnant fusion crust. Their combined mass is just over 6 grams.

Dang Fred, your puzzle is a lot tougher than the nugget in the rabbit poo, but I found them. ?

Careful Steve - your liable to start another gold rush!? Thank you everyone for your thoughts and comments; I'm sure Smokey would have appreciated them.

I would hate to be the guy that was supposed to be guarding that thing. ?

Nice finds Mitchel, wtg!

Sounds like you know all the tricks for squeezing more gold out of those worked out placers; wtg.

You go girl! Nice finds.