Northwest Africa 15662 | LL3

Ordinary Chondrite, LL3
Found in Northwest Africa, 2022
Forty matching stones were purchased from an Algerian meteorite dealer. They have a reddish brown weathered exterior. Some display patches of smooth fusion crust while others lack fusion crust entirely. When prepared in the lab, the saw-cut surface reveals densely packed large chondrules some up to 4 mm in diameter!
Some research indicates that L chondrite meteorites may have had their origin in the Ordovician meteor event, which occurred about 467.5 million years ago. Scientists theorize that during this event, fragments from the L chondrite parent body — believed to have been destroyed about 468 million years ago — that had made it into Earth-crossing orbits, rained down on Earth. Some sources theorize that this event may have contributed to, or even instigated, the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event, one of the greatest evolutionary events in the history of life on Earth; it spanned the entire globe and saw vast increases in the variety of types of creatures that inhabited this planet.