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Back in 1988 David Mazurek bought a farm in Edmore, Michigan. While on a tour of the property he noticed a rather strange looking rock that had been used to hold open a barn door and mentioned it to the farmer. The man ended up telling him the story behind the rock and it turned out to be far more fascinating than anyone could ever imagine a rock story could be!
The old farmer told him that in the 1930’s a meteorite had crashed to Earth right there on his property. It was incredibly noisy and when the farmer and his father went out the following morning, they found a large crater in the ground. They ended up digging the 22 pound rock out of the center of the hole and he even claimed that it was still warm to the touch.
After purchasing the farm from the old man, David kept the rock and used it to prop open the barn door for years. When he moved yet again, he ended up taking the rock with him and continued to use it as a doorstop at his new place. There was one time that he brought it to his children’s school to use it for show-and-tell, but other than that, the stone sat by the door for years.
In 2018 a meteor shower over Michigan led to people all over the state finding meteorites on their own properties. Many people sold them as specimens and made quite a lot of money doing so. When David heard about all of this, he wondered what his meteorite was worth, or if it was even real. He reached out to a geologist friend who told him to go to Dr. Mona Sirbescu, a geology professor at Central Michigan University. She agreed to take a look at the stone but thought that it was probably just another plain old rock. Over the last 18 years people have asked her to examine rocks that they think are meteorites all the time, and every time the answer has been no.
However, when David brought his strange looking rock in to Dr. Sirbescu’s office she knew right away that this one was different. The rock looked like a meteorite, it was heavy and metallic, and when she tested it, she determined that it was made up of 88.5% iron and 11.5% nickel. Additional testing done by the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC verified her results and now they knew it was indeed a meteorite.
According to Dr. Sirbescu, the 22 pound meteorite is the sixth largest ever found in Michigan and worth around $100,000. David can sell it to a private collector or to a museum for display, and several museums have already expressed interest. For the time being, he has allowed Dr. Sirbescu to use it in her classes and her students had the unique opportunity that many geologists will never experience, they get to hold a meteorite in their hands.
If that doesn’t sound exciting, then perhaps what Dr. Sirbescu said about it will put it into perspective “Just think, what I was holding is a piece of the early solar system that literally fell into our hands.” Not too bad for an old rock that was used as a doorstop for who knows how many years!
Watch the video below for the full story:
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