Petrology, Mineralogy and Petrography of a Type II-III Carbonaceous Chondrite.

Abstract

Meteorite thin section EET-92-070, 3 is a cross section of a Carbonaceous Chondrite, a rock consisting of, among other bodies, several igneous droplets called chondrules that likely formed in the accretionary disk of our solar system prior to 4.4 billion years ago.Photographs of the chondrite taken at several magnifications illustrate the mineralogy and petrography of the sample, as well as the different chondrule textures. Backscattered electron images, energy dispersive x-ray peaks and elemental density maps from Scanning Electron Microscopy provide a general chemical layout of the chondrite, detail the basic chemistry of each individual body and allow for the rapid identification of any mineral-chemical anomalies.Analysis thus far reveals that the meteorite is either of petrologic type II or type III, suggesting that it has undergone only minor metamorphosis.Therefore, it has been relatively unchanged since its formation in an early stage of the evolution of the solar system.Data and previous research suggest that further study of the meteorite would yield valuable information about the processes that operated during the first few hundred million years of the Solar Nebula.