Deport. 267g

The Deport meteorite was found in Red River County, Texas (USA) in 1926. It is an important old meteorite and one of the very first meteorites that Oscar Monnig cataloged for his collection. Deport is classified as an Iron, Coarse Octahedrite (IAB). As an iron meteorite, it probably comes from the core of asteroids that were destroyed by impacts with other bodies. It is an alloy of iron-nickel mainly although it contains other trace elements. This specimen is among the very first meteorites that Oscar Monnig cataloged for his collection. It was labeled by having a flat spot ground into them and then metal punches were used to apply their catalog number (see the 1AS code). These all were labeled with a number for the locality (number 1 in this case for Deport – the first locality entered into Monnig’s collection) followed by a letter for the order in which the specimen was cataloged starting with the letter A. The curators at Texas Christian University had no idea that Monnig had ever used such a system of labeling until these pieces were discovered in a batch of what were supposed to be Odessa specimens. Luckily they were recognized.