Introduction (Updated 2012)

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The Martian Meteorite Compendium

Introduction to MMC 2017 — Kevin Righter

This represents the first update of the martian meteorite compendium since Chuck Meyer's last update before his retirement in 2012.

We have made some changes and additions to the webpage, including:

  • Addition of 42 new samples to the compendium. While all of these are officially recognized by the Nomenclature Committee of the Meteoritical Society, there is still only scarce information available about some of them. As a result many of the new samples do not yet have a write–up. Our long term plan is to add write–ups when sufficient information becomes available from meeting abstracts or published peer-reviewed papers. Chuck's last update in 2012 included 62 samples – there are now 104!
  • The basaltic shergottites were originally a small group of classic meteorites such as Shergotty, Zagami, and Lithology B of EET 79001. There are now over 40 basaltic shergottites – the diversity within this group begs for some further distinction, so in this update we have utilized the textural classification scheme and split the basaltic shergottites into "diabasic", "fine–grained", and "gabbroic" shergottites, and the lherzolitic shergottites we call instead "poikilitic" shergottites. So, there are a total of 9 different classifications used here – "diabasic", "fine––grained", "gabbroic", "poikilitic" and "olivine-phyric" shergottites, nakhlites, chassignites, orthopyroxenites, polymict breccia.
  • In addition to the 9 classifications, we also include isotopic affinity and denote – wherever available –whether the sample is enriched, depleted, or intermediate.
  • The whole rock compositional data that is tabulated in the sample write-ups has now been pulled out into separate spreadsheets and is available for download as excel sheets that are linked from the main page.
  • Many thanks to L. Mueller for re–designing and updating these compendium pages, and to C. Satterwhite and R. Funk for proofreading the material presented here; however K. Righter claims responsibility for any mistakes there may be – please let him know! (kevin.righter-1@nasa.gov)