CATALOGUE OF METEORITES FROM SOUTH AMERICA

ROGELIO DANIEL ACEVEDO, MAXIMILIANO C.L. ROCCA AND VÍCTOR MANUEL GARCÍA

Springer

Lugar: Ámsterdam‎; Año: 2013 p. 50

978-3-319-01924-6

ABOUT THIS CATALOGUE South America is a very large continent with many different types of geological and geographical landscapes and terrains so quite large numbers of meteorites can be expected. However, the total number of meteorites from this continent only represent the 1 % of all the specimens obtained from the entire World. One rason is that many large areas of South America are covered with dense tropical rainforests (e.g., the Brazilian Amazonas) that make extremely hard to find or recuperate meteorites. The very humid weather there also makes very difficult the preservation of meteorite specimens. On the other hand the enormous desert zones in many areas of South America (e.g., the Atacama?s desert in the Pacific Ocean coast of Chile, Fig. 1) are prolific sources of exceptionally well preserved meteorite specimens (Bland et al., 2000).