A meteorite worth 10 million yen was used as a door stopper for 80 years
Even if a meteorite of high academic value falls in front of you, most people would not realize that it is a meteorite. A case has been reported at Central Michigan University in the United States in which a stone that had been used as a door stopper for 80 years was found to be a meteorite of high academic and financial value.
Meteorite stardom only scratches surface of geology's allure | Central Michigan University
Man Uses Strange Rock as Doorstop for Decades. It Was Worth a Fortune. : ScienceAlert
https://www.sciencealert.com/man-uses-strange-rock-as-doorstop-for-decades-it-was-worth-a-fortune
David Mazurek, from Michigan, bought a farm in Edmore, Michigan around 1988. The farm had a shed, and a strange rock was used as the door stopper for the shed. When Mazurek asked the previous owner of the farm about the identity of the strange rock, the previous owner replied, 'This door stopper is actually a meteorite.'
The previous owner continued, 'One night in the 1930s, my father and I saw a meteorite fall on our land with a loud noise.' The previous owner discovered the crater the next morning and dug up the rock from there. However, the rock was only used as a door stopper for the shed on the farm, and when the farm was sold to Mr. Mazurek, the meteorite was transferred to him as part of the land. Mr. Mazurek took the rock with him when he moved from the farm a few years later, and continued to use it as a door stopper, except when his children occasionally brought the rock to school to talk about meteorites.
About 30 years after Mazurek became the owner of the meteorite, in 2018, more than 80 years after its discovery, Mazurek learned that the meteorite had monetary value and asked Mona Lisa Servesque, a geologist at Central Michigan University, to investigate it. According to Servesque, in his 18-year career, he had been asked many times if a rock was a meteorite, but he had never actually found one. However, the rock weighing about 10 kg that Mazurek brought in was so valuable that Servesque, who was skeptical when he heard the story, said, 'I immediately realized that this was something special.'
The following movie was released by Central Michigan University about the results of the investigation of the rock brought by Mr. Mazurek. The movie explains that this rock is an iron-nickel meteorite containing about 12 percent nickel, a metal rarely found on Earth, and is the sixth largest of the 11 meteorites ever found in Michigan. Mr. Servesk said, 'This is the most valuable specimen I have ever had, both financially and scientifically.'
As a result, Mazurek sold the meteorite to the Michigan State University Abrams Planetarium for $75,000 and donated 10 percent of the proceeds to the university's Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. 'I now have a meteorite that has a lot to tell us about the early history of the universe,' said Serbescu. 'It is a great honor for Central Michigan University to have been able to discover, identify and classify this meteorite.'
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