The Meteorite of Mont Dieu
By Alain Carion

I was lucky enough to be the first one to recognize and authenticate the 68th French meteorite. It all began at the end of June 1994, during the Mineral Show of Sainte-Marie aux Mines, a town in eastern France with a long and brilliant mining history. The oldest French Mineral Show, over 25 years old, is held there every year during the last week-end of June. It attracts over 500 dealers and 15,000 visitors who for nearly a week invade the theater, the high school and a good part of the town. Some set up tents converted into stores for the occasion, others all around the Show present their findings in the open trunk of their cars. That year my stand was outside and I had of course a good selection of meteorites, tektites and impactites.

On Sunday, the last day of the show, a young couple asked me if I was really a expert in meteorites. I answered positively and explained what was on the table in front of me. They then pulled out of a plastic bag a brownish rock about 4 cm across, rather light in weight, resembling a piece of iron so badly oxidized that the metal had almost completely disappeared and the rust was now falling off in sheets. They explained that their parents, curators of a small mineral museum in the Ardennes, had received this object from a person who had found, with a metal detector, a block of about 40 kg in the ground.

The fragment they had brought to me, had been broken off its surface. Despite its aspect, I was immediately convinced that I was looking at a new meteorite because, within those cleaving pieces of rust, I had noticed a triangular structure no more than 1 cm across where the bronze-like metal was still visible. Visual memory is a fantastic tool; after more than ten years something reappears in your mind with which you can compare. I had already seen this kind of structure when I had bought a collection of meteorite fragments from Canyon Diablo in Arizona. They had spent many years outside, some were very oxidized and the outer surface was peeling off like an onion and there I had seen those famous triangles with traces of metal. I was happy and very excited when I told my visitors: "Yes, I think it is a meteorite." I offered to keep the fragment and take it to the Museum of Natural History in Paris for confirmation. Four days later, positive answer in hand, I called those people to give them the great news. And we decided to go meet the discoverer the following Saturday.

My head was swimming with ideas during the whole trip there; I tried to imagine the shape of the meteorite, I wondered if its owner would be willing to sell it, and at what price. Rather agitated, like any collector, I even got there early. In fact, the intermediary I met there was not unknown to me. He was a mineral collector like me, we had met a few years earlier, we had made a trade and he remembered the deal with pleasure. I learned from him that the person who had discovered the meteorite, had done so several months ago, that he had shown it to several local experts and professors of neighboring colleges but no one in the area had expressed any precise opinion about the rock. He then brought it to the museum, where the curator thought that it could be a meteorite, remembered me and had entrusted his children with a small fragment before they had left for Sainte-Marie aux Mines.

At last the big moment arrived. A quick phone call and 10 minutes later we were walking in Mr. C.'s house, right by the river Meuse. We went down to the garage where he had deposited the stone. I found it to be potato-shaped and very oxidized. I asked if he was willing to sell it and at what price. Of course he answered that he had no idea of its value and asked me to make an offer. I am very familiar with this situation; in Morocco, for instance, there are no published prices, so every time I want to buy a mineral or a fossil I hear this answer. My policy has always been to refuse to make an offer, but this time my instinct of collector forced me to jump in, financial considerations being left far behind the desire to own the object. I made an offer and a few tenths of a second later I read on my opponent's face that my price was much too high but it was too late. I have never regretted what it did cost me to become the owner of the 68th French meteorite, and only the second metallic one ever found in the country.

We finalized the purchase over coffee and I learned that Mr. C., who had been a metal detector fanatic since childhood, had specialized in the search for knives and bayonets from the last World Wars. It was while looking for those in the forest of Montdieu that he had found the meteorite. He volunteered to give me a copy of a large scale map of the area and showed me the exact location of the find. I explained then that a meteorite will sometimes fall apart when entering the atmosphere or on impact, and that there could be other fragments. I suggested that he went back to the forest and criss-crossed the area.

Back in Paris, my first step was to clean up the meteorite to get rid of the clay still stuck to it in places, then I took many pictures of every side of it, with and without a ruler for scale. Finally I placed it within the vise of my saw and started to cut it at slow speed. A metallic meteorite often carries its identity inscribed in its structure, a cut and polish followed by an acid bath can reveal it. However, in this case, the blade that I had used just a few days earlier was skipping miserably, and had only moved 1or 2 mm in an hour. In addition the blade was now greasy and black, I had to change it several times before the cut was finished. I quickly reached the conclusion that the meteorite of Montdieu had to contain several types of inclusions; the sad shape of my blade led me to think that some of it was graphite; and sure enough I found some, along with many bands of sulfur.

The next day, very proud of my purchase, I rushed to the laboratory of the Museum on rue Buffon to show off the new meteorite. I still remember the words of Paul Pellas; he said almost immediately: "By the looks of this meteorite, I wouldn't be surprised if it was only one piece of a multiple fall, you might even find a 500 kg block somewhere." The phrase was said in a moment of great joy, it might even have been wishful thinking. In any case, Mr. C. called me ten days later: "I went back to the site with a friend, we searched night and day, and we found more fragments, 140 kg all together. The largest piece weighs 95 kg just by itself. If you are interested, I can let you have them for the same price per gram as the first one. I'll give you a week to think about it before I offer them elsewhere."

Understanding the interest of being the only owner of the entire meteorite, I managed, with the help of my relatives, to gather up the sum but, a few days later, Mr. C. called again. "After your last trip here, we invested in some better metal detecting equipment, and we have found another 200 kg worth of fragments from 5 to 15 kg; this time we cleaned up the whole area but we drew and measured the site very carefully, we have a complete diagram of the elliptical fall."

The summer vacations came and went, I had occasionally some news from Mr. C., everything was going fine. But, at the beginning of September, in the plane carrying me to the States for the Mineral Show of Denver, my mind wandered over many subjects as it usually does during those long hours of flight and I began to ask myself about the ownership of the land the meteorite had been found on, whose was it anyway ? I found the answer as soon as I returned home, right on the map that Mr. C. had given me at my first visit: it was a national forest, so the State was owner of the land. I contacted Mr. C. and the Museum very quickly, and then they contacted the local Prefect. After several months of negotiations and a judgment, Mr. C. had to hand over to the authorities the last batch of fragments still in his possession. Since he only had a few kilos left, the judgment was fair and was accepted by all concerned.

Another question had been asked since the beginning: how long had this meteorite been in the ground? In this humid region the life of metal objects is very short. To people accustomed to archaeological research, the condition of the surface of the meteorite indicated that it had been on Earth about one hundred years. The next question was of course: how can it be that, in this densely populated area, no one had seen or heard anything ? The only explanation, I think, is that this meteorite probably fell during the War of 1870 or during World War I, when this part of the Ardennes was the scene of many violent battles.

Alain Carion is a mineral and meteorite dealer based in Paris, France.