Longueuil, Quebec, July 25, 2005 – Each of the past five summers, a field campaign has been organized for the Prairie region to find and study new meteorites. Tom Weedmark, a geology student from the University of Calgary, is conducting the Prairie Meteorite Search this summer. Until the end of August, he will visit towns in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba to present specimens to interested people so they can learn about the key characteristics. So if you think you have found a meteorite, bring it along to be identified.
"Meteorite finds are important because they provide clues about the history of our Solar System," says Dr. Alan Hildebrand, from the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Calgary. "Most meteorites are fragments of asteroids formed at the birth of our solar system, and they provide us with precious insights into its origins."
As the second largest country in the world, Canada is a vast target for meteorites. In the last five years, some 700 meteorites are estimated to have fallen here. However, meteorites are still some of the scarcest material on Earth, much more rare than gold. They are sought after by collectors and researchers alike.
Winnipeg-based rock collector Derek Erstelle is the only person in Canada to have found two meteorites, the first in 1998 near Pinawa and the other in 2002 near Bernic Lake, in Manitoba. Finding more than one meteorite in the same area may indicate that many were carried and left there by glaciers that retreated from Western Canada at the end of the last Ice Age.
"Derek found these where two lobes of the Laurentide ice sheet met about 11,500 years ago," says Dr. Hildebrand. "He may have located a meteorite stranding surface where hundreds or thousands of meteorites were concentrated by glacial flow and were dumped in a small area when the ice melted." Dr. Hildebrand says this theory can be tested by determining how long the Bernic Lake and Pinawa meteorites have been on Earth, and by searching for more meteorites in the region near Pinawa.
The annual summer Prairie Meteorite Search is led by Dr. Hildebrand of the University of Calgary, Dr. Peter Brown of the University of Western Ontario, and Dr. Martin Beech of Campion College at the University of Regina. The three scientists are members of the Canadian Space Agency's Meteorites and Impacts Advisory Committee (MIAC), Canada's volunteer group charged with the investigation of fireballs and the recovery of meteorites. The Canadian Space Agency is funding the project's field costs for the summer of 2005.
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For more information:
Tom Weedmark, Prairie Meteorite Searcher
Telephone: (403) 852-5613
Dr. Alan Hildebrand
University of Calgary
Telephone: (403) 220-2291
http://www.geo.ucalgary.ca/PMSearch/
Nicholas Girard
Communications Advisor
Media Relations
Canadian Space Agency
Telephone: (450) 926-4370
E-mail: nicholas.girard@space.gc.ca
