Rocks on Fire Meteorite Sales

Dimensions: 107.2 x 72.7 x 22.4 mm max.
Name: Olivine Bomb
Location: Mortlake, Victoria, 380330S 142900E,
Country: AUSTRALIA
Date: Find: March, 2000
Weight: 133.1 g

This Xenolith is from the depth of our earth, ejected at a volcanic eruption as a volcanic or olivine 'bomb'. This is as close as we can get to samples from the core of our Earth, unveiling the secrets of our planets build-up.

This Mantle Xenolith is most likely filled nearly complete with nice green olivine crystals, most of them shattered by the enormous forces of the eruption. It has not been cut to show the interesting exterior. The piece has a very nice lava/ scoria crust.

Mount Shadwell is the highest of a group of scoria cones overlaying a small accumulation of tuff and surrounded by lava flows. The arrangement of four overlapping scoria mounts suggests an original crater with a high southern rim opening towards the nothwest, but largely covered by later eruptions. It is assumed that this happened within the last million of years. The scoria comes from beneath the earths crust, approx. 250 km below, and is ejected as particles ranging in ash ( up to 4mm), lapilli (4 - 32 mm) and finally blocks and bombs ( ranging from 32 mm upwards). The bombs are often drop shaped due to their solidifying from a liquid or semi liquid form as the plummet through the air. Mt. Shadwell is noted as a good source of olivine and augite ultramafic xenolith as well as clinopyroxene and orthoclase megacrysts contained in basalts and scoria. The host rock is basanite which is the most common lava of the explosive centres.

This is a Specimen not to be missed in a Meteorite or Mineral Collection, but it is also quite a show piece on it's own.

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