New York – For sale: a rock of 54 pounds (25 kilograms). Price of estimated auctions: $ 2 to 4 million. Why so dear? It is the biggest piece of Mars never found on earth.
Sotheby’s in New York will be sold at auction which is known as NWA 16788 Wednesday as part of a sale on the theme of natural history which also includes a skeleton of juvenile ceratosaurus dinosaurus which measures more than 6 feet (2 meters) in height and almost 11 feet (3 meters) long.
According to the auction house, the meteorite was blown up on the surface of March by a massive asteroid strike before traveling 140 million miles (225 million kilometers) on Earth, where he crashed in the Sahara. A meteorite hunter found it in Niger in November 2023, said Sotheby’s.
The red, brown and gray song is around 70% larger than the largest piece of Mars found on earth and represents almost 7% of all Martian materials currently on this planet, says Sotheby’s. It measures almost 15 inches per 11 inches per 6 inches (375 millimeters per 279 millimeters per 152 millimeters).
“This Martian meteorite is the biggest piece of March that we have never found in the long term,” said Cassandra Hatton, vice-president of science and natural history at Sotheby’s, in an interview. “It is therefore more than double the size of what we thought before was the largest piece in March.”
It is also a rare discovery. There are only 400 Martian meteorites on more than 77,000 officially recognized meteorites found on Earth, known as Sotheby’s.
Hatton said that a small piece of the rest of the red planet had been removed and sent to a specialized laboratory that confirmed that he came from March. It was compared to the distinct chemical composition of the Martian meteorites discovered during the Viking space probe which landed in March in 1976, she said.
The examination revealed that it is an “olivine-microgabbroic shergottite”, a type of Martian rock formed from the slow cooling of Martian magma. It has a texture with class grains and contains pyroxen and Olivine minerals, known as Sotheby’s.
It also has a glass surface, probably due to the high heat that burned it when it fell into the earth’s atmosphere, Hatton said. “It was therefore their first index that it was not only a big rock on the ground,” she said.
The meteorite was previously exhibited at the Italian space agency in Rome. Sotheby’s has not disclosed the owner.
We don’t know exactly when the meteor has hit the earth, but the tests show that it has probably happened in recent years, said Sotheby’s.
The Ceratosaurus nasicornis juvenile skeleton was found in 1996 near Laramie, Wyoming, in Bone Cabin Quarry, a gold mine for dinosaurs bones. Specialists have gathered nearly 140 fossil bones with sculpted materials to recreate the skeleton and mounted it to be ready to exhibit, says Sotheby’s.
The skeleton is supposed to come from the period of the Upper Jurassic, about 150 million years ago, says Sotheby’s. Its auction estimate is $ 4 to 6 million.
Ceratosaurus dinosaurs were two -ways with short arms that seem similar to the Tyrannosaurus rex, but smaller. Ceratosaurus dinosaurs could reach up to 25 feet (7.6 meters) long, while the Rex tyrannosaurs could measure 40 feet (12 meters) long.
The skeleton was acquired last year by Fossillogic, a fossil preparation and assembly company based in Utah.
Wednesday’s auction is one of Sotheby’s Geek 2025 week and offers 122 articles, including other meteorites, fossils and gem quality minerals.
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Collins reported to Hartford, Connecticut.
