Two New Minerals Discovered: The Mystery of the El Ali Meteorite

Geologist Chris Heard was visibly proud when, in a recent lecture at a symposium at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, he described two newly discovered minerals that experts had previously thought did not occur in nature.

Even more unusual than the discovery itself, however, was the background that made it possible for Heard's research team to identify these iron phosphate minerals in the first place.

The story begins with camel herders in the Hiran region of Somalia.

For generations, nomadic herdsmen have stopped their flocks at an unusual rock that lay seemingly randomly in the flat, open savannah near the town of El Ali.

They used the approximately two-meter-tall, slightly metallically shiny chunk as a sharpening stone for their knives and daggers.

The shepherds also spread legends about the origin of the stone, because it did not fit into the otherwise rock-free landscape.

Because Islamic insurgents in Somalia repeatedly raged in the Hiran region, no geologists dared to go into the area.

When a group of prospectors in search of opals met the shepherds three years ago, they became aware of the strange stone.

With a hammer the prospectors loosened a small,

A weight of more than 15 tons

Because the prospectors could not explain the origin of the stone, they sawed the sample in two.

They sent one to Alberta, to the world-renowned meteorite expert Heard.

The other piece went to an institute at Duke University in North Carolina, which also specializes in identifying meteorites.

A few months later, the geologists returned to the site in a truck, loaded the stone and set off for Mogadishu.

Shortly before arriving in the Somali capital, however, the cargo was confiscated by the military.

Because the authorities suspected that the stone had something to do with the Islamists, they took it to a guarded warehouse near the port.

After all, the stone was weighed there.

Meanwhile, in Canada, Chris Heard analyzed the rock fragment.

He determined that it was a class IAB iron meteorite.

Its enormous weight of more than 15 tons made the stone discovered at El Ali the ninth largest meteorite ever found on the surface of the earth.

Such meteorites are several billion years old and date back to the early days of the solar system.

It is not clear when this powerful stone landed in Somalia.

Both traces of weathering on its surface and legends of shepherds indicate that it must have happened several hundred years ago.

Heard then passed the rock sample to his colleague Andrew Locock, also at the University of Alberta, for intensive examination with the electron microscope.

He discovered tiny mineral fragments in the sample, which consisted of an unusual iron phosphate with nine iron atoms, twelve oxygen atoms and one phosphorus atom.

The pieces turned out to be two entirely new minerals whose existence was previously only known from laboratory experiments.

The team named one after the location of the meteorite, elaliite, and the second, after NASA researcher Lindy Elkins-Tanton, elkinstantonite.

As soon as the stone was identified as a meteorite, several research groups wanted to examine further fragments.

However, when they inquired about it in Somalia, it turned out that the stone had meanwhile disappeared from the warehouse in Mogadishu.

The chunk was allegedly loaded onto a ship bound for China.

However, the recipient and destination are not known to the port authorities.

Now the researchers are wondering where the 15-ton chunk is.

Who knows how many secrets from the solar system's nursery still lie in this stone?

The sample that was available to the Canadian researchers ended up weighing only 70 grams - less than one hundredth per thousand of the total weight of the peculiar meteorite.