Northwest Africa 16181 16.1g

Description

A singular stone was purchased from a Moroccan dealer in Errachidia, Morocco by Aerolite’s president, Elizabeth. Upon inspection, the meteorite was classified as an LL3. These chondrites are the rarest of the ordinary chondrites; the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) sent a spacecraft, the Hayabusa, on a return sample mission to an asteroid, called Itokawa, that turned out to be of the LL chondrite type.

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. 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.