The excavated meteorite looked and felt like a huge stone. Actually, it was stony in nature, but of a texture so fragile that it had to be wrapped in tissue paper, then in burlap, and finally covered with a thick coating of plaster of Paris before it could be lifted out of the ground. Those in charge of the removal of the meteorite borrowed this procedure from the paleontologists, who use it in the removal of fossil tusks and bones that otherwise would crumble away.
After the great meteorite had been raised out of the excavation, it was taken by truck to the University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque. There it was put on display beside the smaller 130-pound fragment found in May. By careful measurements, scientists determined the weight of the main mass to be approximately 2,360 pounds—a record weight for stony meteorites.[1] This remarkable meteorite, known as the Furnas County, Nebraska, stone, is now a prized item in the collection of the Institute of Meteoritics.
Field party proudly surrounds the Furnas stone in its protective “armor.”
As more and more finds were made in the area of fall, we accurately recorded their weights and mapped their locations. In this way, we could tell how the pieces of the meteorite had distributed themselves according to size and weight over the oval-shaped area. The smaller and lighter fragments were slowed down by air resistance and fell first, while the 2,360-pound mass carried on beyond them and came to earth at the farthest point along the direction of flight.
The staff of the Institute took many photographs of the meteorites that were found, of the impact funnel made by the largest mass, and of the excavation and removal of that giant stone. Some of these pictures were published in scientific journals, others in magazine and newspaper articles. A few of our best photographs are included in this chapter.
Although the light and sound effects that accompanied the Ussuri and Norton falls were similar, the meteorites recovered from them were not at all alike. The Ussuri specimens were masses of nickel-iron so malleable that on high-speed impact with hard rock they had held together and taken twisted and ragged shapes. But the Norton meteorites were very fragile stony masses, many of which went to pieces either in the air or when they struck the ground. Almost all of the recoveries made of this very rare type of stony meteorite were fragments, not whole specimens. They somewhat resembled pieces of a strange whitish mixture of chalk and crystalline limestone containing tiny specks and lumps of nickel-iron. Many specimens were covered wholly or in part by a shiny varnish-like fusion crust, varying in color from jet black through yellow to almost pure white.
The Furnas stone, protected by its “armor,” hangs suspended from the truck crane that raised it out of its deep “penetration funnel” in the earth.
The largest meteorite recovered from the Norton fall was the 2,360-pound mass that formed the deep impact funnel. The smallest Norton specimens, like their Ussuri counterparts, weighed no more than the thousandth part of a gram. Altogether, nearly a ton and a half of meteoritic material from the Norton fall was collected by the Institute. Other small fragments may remain undiscovered in the Kansas and Nebraska wheatlands, but, unfortunately, because of the soft and fragile nature of the material they are composed of, it is likely that they have now weathered away so completely that they are no longer recognizable as meteorites.