The Angers Natural Sciences Museum welcomed a special donation this Tuesday, December 17, 2024. A 55,000 year old meteorite, weighing 105 kilos, was indeed donated to the Angevin museum.
The meteorite weighs 105 kilos – © Angers.Villactu.fr
Around 55,000 years ago, meteorites coming from the asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter fell near the town of Saint-Aubin, in Aube. In 1968, farmers accidentally found meteorite fragments. In 2018, Pierre Antonin, a “meteorite hunter”, passionate since his childhood, decided to return to the site to try to find out more.
« The area to be inspected was huge. I had the idea of creating a large detector to probe the soil by being attached to tractors while they were working in the fields. », says Pierre Antonin. This brilliant idea allows him, by simply experimenting, to find the first meteorite after an hour. Subsequently, it will identify no fewer than 123 impact points and recover nine tons of meteorites. This is the largest meteorite fall to occur in France. Among these meteorites, the one which is today exhibited at the Angers natural sciences museum weighs 105 kilos.
Anne Esnault, director of the Angers museums; Pierre Antonin, the discoverer and donor; Nicolas Dufetel, Deputy for Culture; Benoît Mellier, head of the zoology, earth sciences and prehistory collections at the museum – © Angers.Villactu.fr
To prevent meteorites from deteriorating, the “meteorite hunter” has developed a process to preserve this extraterrestrial object: “ When extracted from the ground, meteorites tend to oxidize, especially with the time they have spent in soils that have received chemical fertilizers. There was previously no process for preserving them. Thanks to dechlorination using subcritical fluids, the chemical elements which polluted the meteorite are extracted in order to better preserve it. »
A meteorite that fell in Angers in 1822
The meteorite that fell in Angers is also visible at the museum – © Angers.Villactu.fr
The meteorite which arrived this Tuesday March 17, 2024 in Angers joins two other meteorites already visible to the public. It sits next to a meteorite that fell in the Orne in 1805 and a second that landed in the Doutre, in Angers, in 1822. In 2022, we celebrated the bicentenary of its fall with an exhibition. It was on this occasion that we had our first discussions with Pierre Antonin », explains Benoît Mellier, head of the zoology, earth sciences and prehistory collections at the Angers museum.
By Sylvain Réault.
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