Description
Seymchan is the meteorite that kept on getting more interesting as time went on. First discovered during the summer of 1967 by the Russian geologist F. A. Mednikov, it was originally classified as a IIE iron meteorite. In the early 2000s, meteorite hunters associated with the Vernadsky Institute in Moscow returned to the site in the hope of finding additional specimens. They did. And there were amazed to discover not iron meteorites, but pallasites — stony-iron meteorites encrusted with olivine crystals. Their finds resulted in a rare classification change in the scientific literature: in 2007 van Niekerk et al. revised the designation for Seymchan from iron to pallasite.
Most known Seymchan specimens are rich in iron, or rich in olivine, but this highly desirable example is described as a transitional specimen, in that it presents both structures. This juxtaposition of differing structures has occasionally been seen in the Brenham (Kansas) and Glorieta Mountain (New Mexico) pallasites, but is extremely rare, especially in a large end cut, such as this.
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