The largest piece of Mars ever found on Earth was sold during an auction of rare geological and archaeological objects for over $5 million. But the showstopper of the auction was held in New York City on Wednesday, was more than $30 million worth of a rare young dinosaur skeleton. The estimated sale price before the auction for the rock was between $2 million and $4 million.
The 54-pound rock named NWA16788 was discovered in the Sahara Desert in Niger by a meteor hunter in November 2023. The huge boulder was blown off the surface of Mars by a massive asteroid strike, after which it travelled 140 miles to Earth.
Identifying Mars Rock
The identity of the buyer was not immediately disclosed. The live bidding was slow with the auctioneers hunting for more offers and decreasing the minimum bid. After adding other fees and taxes, the official sale price came out to be $5.3 million, making this boulder the most valuable meteorite ever sold, while the bidding for the skeleton started with a high advance offer of $6 million and soon escalated to its end price at dollar 26 million. The bidding concluded with audience applauding.
The red, brown, and grey meteoroid is about 70% larger than the next largest piece of Mars found on Earth and represents nearly 7% of all the Martian material present on the planet, according to Sotheby’s. The boulder is measured nearly 15″ x 11″ x 6″. The rock is amongst the only 400 Martian meteorites out of more than 77,000 officially recognised meteorites found on Earth.
“This Mars meteorite is the largest piece of Mars we have ever found by a long shot… So it’s more than double the size of what we precisely thought was the largest piece of Mars,” said Cassandra Hatton, the vice chairman for science and natural history at Sotheby’s.
Hatton has a specialised lab to examine small pieces of red planet remnant to confirm that it was a piece from Mars. He also compared it with distinct chemical composition of Martian meteorites discovered during the Viking space probe that landed on Mars in 1976. The examination concluded that it is an olivine microgabbroic shergottite, a type of Martian rock formed from the slow cooling of Martian magma. The rock has coarse-grained texture and contains the mineral pyroxene and olivine. It also has a glassy surface due to high heat that burnt it when it fell through Earth’s atmosphere.
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