Santa Vitoria do Palmar meteorite

Santa Vitoria do Palmar is the 53th meteorite find from Brazil.

This was preceded by the discovery a spectacular fireball appearance on 25 June 1997 on the cities of Santa Vitória do Palmar in the extreme southeast of Brazil and Chuy in northeastern Uruguay. Although immediately after the event both sides of the border started search operations, at first no meteorite was found. Only six years later, in March 2003 Roberto Maciel discovered in search of Indian arrowheads by chance a 34- kg mass on the shores of Laguna Merín. Other discoveries followed in 2004, but without that samples reached an institution, which confirmed the findings as a meteorite. It was not until the end of 2005 succeeded the German Dr. Svend Buhl meteoriticists to make and send samples to the Berlin Museum of Natural History in touch with the finders. This confirmed that it was meteorites found on the findings and carried out the mineralogical- petrographic analysis and classification.

In Santa Vitoria do Palmar is an olivine - hypersthene chondrite of type L3 with a shock stage S3 / 4 and a weathering grade of W2. The perfect unequilibrierte meteorite consists almost entirely of tightly packed chondrules that have almost all known crystallization pattern. While large parts of the meteorite are darkened by a strong shock event, show a few gates also unchanged light parts.

As between the fireball sighting and the meteorite finds a period of six years had passed, could not be more clearly clarify whether the masses found are attributed to the observed event beyond doubt. According to protocol, the Nomenclature Committee of the Meteoritical Society therefore decided Santa Vitoria do Palmar, as a fund rather than the observed event rate.

Santa Vitoria do Palmar has now been officially added to the Data Base of the Meteoritical Bulletin and published in the Meteoritical Bulletin Nr.91/2007.