Just 50 kilometres west of Lac La Biche County’s western border, Nick Duma thought he had found something out of this world.
The Grassland-area resident found an unusual rock on his rural property about a year ago. The massive, egg-shaped rock weighes 14 kilograms and was covered with thick veins of colour, Duma thought he’d found a meteorite. For the next several months, he embarked on a search to find some answers.
“It sat on my property for over a year and after doing some research, it looked like it could be a meteorite,” he told LakelandToday on July 13.
Like many folks who are eager to see if they found a treasure from outer space, oftentimes it’s just a rock, says Chris Herd, University of Alberta (U of A) Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Unfortunately, he thinks Duma’s find is one of those.
'Meteowrongs'
“Most people recognize they’re different from anything they have on their property which is great and interesting, but it’s not…we call them ‘meteowrongs’. They look like meteorites but aren’t,” he said, explaining that in Duma’s case, the find is actually sedimentary rock.
Herd examined photos of Duma’s rocky find and says it shows concrete signs that it is Earth-based.
“What we’re looking at here is a sedimentary rock with veins in it. The reason I say sedimentary is because it is very light coloured…the way that it has been broken tells me that it has defined crystals in the grey parts of it. Those grey parts are cross cut by a network of veins with light coloured minerals—it's probably quartz, it almost always has quartz in it.”
Verifying specimens
Since 2003, Herd has been a professor in the department and the curator at the University of Alberta Meteorite Collection which not only has the largest collection of verified space rocks in the country, with over 1,800 different meteorite specimens, but is an international site for testing and verifying meteorites.
“We have the largest based meteorite collection in the whole country and we have the expertise here to do the classifications. Pretty much any meteorite of any type we can classify.”
With over 25 years experience in the industry, it's become quite common to be able to tell with the naked eye if a rock may be a meteorite, and for Duma — and many other findings reported on an annual basis — it doesn’t meet the criteria for a meteorite, the professor said.
“Most of the time people find something that’s black or dark red/brown, it’s magnetic and heavy; those are characteristics that can be an indication that it’s a meteorite. Most often—99.9 per cent of the time—it’s an Earth rock that has those characteristics.”
Currently, the department receives approximately three to ten photo submissions from all around the world each day through the the Faculty of Sciences Meteorite website from people who believe they have found a space rock, said Herd, adding that the reports are growing in number.
"It used to be that number per week but it’s almost every single day now,” he says, attributing the uptick in reports with the growing popularity of the industry in recent years.
While the department reviews every potential meteorites submission, Herd encourages residents to first utilize the faculty’s online tools to assess whether there is a real chance their specimen could indeed be one.
“If it has a dark crust on it, it’s lighter on the inside, if it’s magnetic, if it’s heavier than you expect it to be, those are reasons to have it looked at in more detail,” he said.
Testing
For those that do move forward with the process like Duma, a sample of the specimen is required to be tested in the university’s lab, he added.
“We end up taking what’s called a type specimen; a piece of at least 20 grams from the meteorite that goes into the U of A collection for research," he said.
“You can’t do a lot with it unless it’s officially named and get an idea of the value. A piece needs to come off of it. Sometimes people say, ‘I really want to keep it intact,’ but in fact you have to actually break or cut a piece off in order to really understand what they are as a part of the naming process.”
Additionally, any meteorite that is found belongs to the landowner, Herd added.
Market for meteorites
While many of the University’s collection come from around the world, there are relatively few from Alberta or Canada because even though the topic is getting more popular, there still aren’t that many people actively searching for the fragments. Predominantly, he says, most meteorites are found in north western Africa where nomadic tribes scour the area and have made a living off of selling meteorites, Herd said. Many of the ones found there make their way to the university for research, he said.
“They’ll sell them to dealers mostly in the US and Europe, but they need them classified so we provide that here for a fee…the vast majority of inquiries we get are from places like north-west Africa.”
Often the most common meteorites found are classified as “chondrites” — a meteoric stone made up of dust and grain particles from space. They make up roughly 85-90 per cent of all findings and can range from price depending on the buyer.
“Their value very much depends on what type it is. …It depends on how weathered they are on the surface and also what someone is willing to pay. It’s a free market where people buy, sell and trade meteorites all the time and some people make a living off of it.”
Finding a treasure
While the initial excitement has dwindled, and his specimen isn’t a meteorite, he still hopes to find out what it could be or if there is any history behind it, said Duma.
“It’s a very unique rock and it really looks like something special, I’d love to know more about it in the future,” he said.
Although it’s not a space rock, Herd says Earth rocks can also have very unique histories, with some travelling hundreds or thousands of kilometres from glacier movements or volcanic eruptions, and going through a transformative process from wind, water and erosion pressures. While they aren’t easy to trace, the meteorite, earth and atmospheric sciences expert says it can definitely be special to the owner.
