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Meteorites can be bought expensively at auctions, searched for laboriously, or found by chance. They are of high scientific value. "Meteorites are contemporary witnesses to the time when the solar system was formed. They are over 4.5 billion years old, which is older than the rocks on Earth that are preserved today," says meteorite and impact researcher Christian Köberl at the University of Vienna. He is the doctoral supervisor of the meteorite researcher Ludovic Ferrière and long-time general director of the Natural History Museum, which has one of the largest meteorite collections in the world.
As a young researcher, he himself searched for meteorites in the desert and Antarctica, although in the polar region - thanks to the white snow and ice cover - it was much easier for him to find dark rock or iron meteorites. Finding a meteorite that is perhaps a few decimeters in diameter in autumn forests and meadows is like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Nevertheless, there are also finds made by private individuals who often try to make money from them. “Public collections can hardly afford the horrendous sums paid by profit-hungry finders, so these pieces are withheld from research,” Köberl regrets.
Among the local meteorites, the one with the inventory number L 7496 in the museum's collections, the Ybbsitz meteorite, has one of the most exciting stories - it was a chance find. But it wasn't entirely coincidental either. The finder, geologist Wolfgang Schnabel from the Federal Geological Institute (GBA) in Vienna, was involved in mapping the Ybbsitz geological map from the late 1970s. This means: dense, systematic inspection of the area, recording all the rocks that occur there and recording them on a map. Not easy work, walking in a narrow grid across meadows, fields and through dense forests. The geologist's hammer is always there. Stones are struck with a targeted blow, as only the freshly broken surface reveals the true nature of the rock.
Schnabel looking back today: "You do your routine work, find something that doesn't belong in your area at all - and suddenly you're in all the newspapers." How did this come about? On September 17, 1977, Schnabel was on his way home from Prochenberg, which is located southeast of Ybbsitz (Lower Austria). He took a shortcut through the steep forest slope. At a place where he suspected a change in rock formation from a limestone to a marl formation, he looked at the rocks lying around in detail. Schnabel continued: "I noticed a piece with a diameter of around 20 centimeters due to its brown color and strange surface quality, which was different from the pieces of lime lying around. It stuck out of the forest floor. After I dug it up, I was surprised by its heavy weight and its hardness. It was only with difficulty that I knocked off a piece weighing around a kilo with the hammer."
In the fall of 1979, Schnabel sent a thin section (two by three centimeters) of a piece of this rock to Elisabeth Kirchner, a mineralogist at the university there, in Salzburg for detailed microscopic examinations. She could clearly identify the extraterrestrial nature of the piece. The sensation was perfect! The search for the remaining remains began in April 1980. A forest road had been built at the site, but the remains of the meteorite were still in the ground and could be recovered. In a second search with Gero Kurat, then curator of the museum's meteorite collection, a number of fragments were recovered.
It was always clear to Schnabel that the meteorite belonged in a museum. The ceremonial handover took place in January 1981 in the Rasumofsky Palace, the then headquarters of the GBA. Director Felix Ronner handed the meteorite to the then first director of the Natural History Museum, Oliver Paget. Als Dank und Anerkennung erhielt Schnabel am 5. Dezember 2012 die Goldene Ehrennadel der Freunde des Naturhistorischen Museums. The occasion was the reopening of the Meteorite Hall (Room 5), where there is a showcase with Austrian meteorites, including Schnabel's original find from Ybbsitz. The location of the meteorite is marked with a star on the 1:50,000 geological map.
Meteorites are named after where they were found. The native meteorites found so far belong to the group of chondrites (stone meteorites). Their total mass is around 45 kilos; Around 20 kilos of them are in the collection of the Natural History Museum Vienna, which can be viewed in the Meteorite Hall.
The Natural History Museum's meteorite collection begins with a find from the mid-18th century. When an iron meteorite weighing around 40 kilos fell on May 26, 1751 near Hraschina near the Croatian capital Zagreb, then Agram, Emperor Franz I Stephan, Maria Theresa's husband, demanded a report about the meteor fall and had the meteorite brought to Vienna. The Hraschina meteorite became the "founding meteorite" of the imperial collection, which today forms the basis of the Natural History Museum. Naturally, scientific interest in meteorites also grew in Vienna. Paul M. Partsch (1791–1856), collection curator, published the first printed meteorite catalog in 1843. "The meteorites: or stones and iron masses that fell from the sky in the Imperial and Royal Court Mineral Cabinet in Vienna" in the subtitle: "Described and explained with scientific and historical additions". The mentioned Hraschina meteorite is described under number 77, "Agram".
A few years later, Wilhelm Haidinger (1795–1871), founding director of the k.k. Geological Reichsanstalt (1849), a major work on the Hraschina meteorite. As a mineralogist, Haidinger had scientifically examined a number of meteorites and was one of the early researchers of extraterrestrial rocks. He found it strange that the stone fell at 6 p.m., but the glow of the fireball only disappeared "around 10 p.m., when it got dark." He depicted this phenomenon, which he took from archive documents, more than a hundred years later on a board in his scientific work from 1859. (Thomas Hofmann, December 2, 2020)