A question to anyone who has hunted meteorites in Morocco: Other than a Berber tribesman, has any meteorite dealer/hunter ever found an Oum Rokba stone, I mean, really picked-up from the ground in the actual strewn-field one of the "several hundred" distinctive-looking, chondritic stones that were originally recovered 12 years ago?
I wrote an article back in Dec. 2008 about the Oum Rokba (H5) meteorites, and I repeated the oft-quoted story about "stones being found by a Berber native a few kilometers from an Oasis named Oum Rokba." Since then, I've been asked by several people if I had any direct evidence of that recovery and of its location, in order to make that statement. The actual phrase that I remember being asked was, "Don't you think that it is strange that a strewn-field the size of Oum Rokba (many hundreds of stones), that it's actual location wouldn't be better known? Even a couple square kilometers around the Oum Rokba "oasis" isn't that large that it would forever hide that large of a strewn-field, and by now, someone else must have discovered it's location." Those questions posed to me were implying that, given the benefit any "name" would give to the marketing of a meteorite, it should be considered as too convenient, and that in order to accept the location of this strewn-field it would require corroborating evidence from an independent source/hunter. Also, that this notion would probably be met with resistance, because preserving the mythology would be considered more important than confirming the topography. Personally, all I need is to have just one guy stand-up and say, "Yeah, I found one of those stones there." Bob V. ______________________________________________ Visit the Archives at http://www.meteoritecentral.com/mailing-list-archives.html Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
