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November 11, 2009

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Meteorite found in Nevada to go on display

Sunday, Sept. 5, 1999 | 3:46 a.m.

An amateur rock collector found the one-pound, fist-sized rock from space earlier this year near Rye Patch Reservoir in Pershing County, 115 miles northeast of Reno.

Scientists at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona in Tuscon currently are studying the rock.

Plans call for them to return it to the Fleischmann Planetarium at the University of Nevada, Reno, where it will go on display in the next month or so.

The rock, flecked with various minerals, is a chrondite meteorite, the most common meteorite to fall but the hardest to find, said planetarium director Art Johnson.

"It's pretty stony and blends in well with other rocks, so it's hard to recover unless you see it fall," Johnson said.

It was the first meteorite found in Nevada since one turned up in 1995 in Churchill County. Others were found in Nye County in 1908 and 1935.

Scores of meteorites have been found in some farm states because they are easier to spot in cultivated fields, Johnson said.

They tend to blend in with other rocks in Nevada, which is the most mountainous state in the lower 48, he said.

"Probably within a mile of where you're sitting, there is a meteorite to be found," Johnson said. "Here in Nevada they're just much harder to spot."

During his 26 years at the planetarium, Johnson said, Nevadans have brought him hundreds of rocks believed to be meteorites.

"Mostly, they are meteor-wrongs. But this one turned out to be a meteorite," he said.

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