Niger Meteorite Recon

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Rub' al-Khali Expedition 2008
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Text: Svend Buhl, Photos: Svend Buhl and Thomas Kurtz

Al Abwaab as-Sabr, The Gates of Patience

Until sunset we continued towards our second search area. Half along the way we built a dump with our improvised jerry cans, food and drinking water. The dump would enable us to operate longer independently in the area. As we continued, suddenly after overcoming a steep bump and barely ten meters in front of us a pitch black stone appeared.

The visibility is decreasing, a dust storm is building up

On approaching it all doubts disappeared. 'This is the real McCoy' Thomas claimed and right he was. Deep contraction cracks widened through chemical and mechanical weathering clearly indicated another find. Also a slightly fresher find than the one we had discovered before noon. Happy about the unexpected present we gave an Indian dance on the spot. To be more precisely, to keep a low profile we performed the local Bedouin variant, at least what we thought this would look like from hearsay.

We planned to return to the location on our way back to see whether 'Rhub al-Khali 003' belonged to an undiscovered strewn field and if there would be more masses to find.

Already in the afternoon the breeze had intensified. Until the evening the range of visibility had decreased from almost fifteen kilometers to a couple of hundred meters. Gray dust clouds darkened the sky which indistinctly melted with the horizon without a distinguishable dividing line. The sun disappeared early and glowed until sunset through a thick haze the color of molten lead.

‚Rub' al-Khali 005', a fresh chondrite of 7.2g found by accident between our own tracks

Colors and contours of the landscape dissolved and the desert showed its pitiless face. Under rapidly worsening visibility conditions we searched for a wind protected camp site. Finally we succeeded and halted near the bank of a shallow erosion furrow. Pitching our tents which we tied redundantly and additionally secured with boulders took us twice the usual time.

Around our fireplace we constructed a windbreak. But despite all the effort the dry roots we had collected during the day and which we now fed to the blaze burned twice as fast. Instead the scrambled eggs on the gas stove took what seemed for hours due to the frequent gusts that swept through the campsite and deflected the flame. At the first teeth gritting mouthful we mutually suspected us of having assisted to the earthy taste with a fistful of sand.

Al Abwaab as-Sabr, The Gates of Patience

With the torch I later discovered that although I had closed my tent meticulously a miniature dune landscape had assembled on the floor inside. Due to the dedicated maledictions Thomas issued the situation in his housing wasn't any better. ‚How's it in your place' he inquired. 'F… reputable Ghibbli' I coughed as I crouched in my sleeping bag under swirling clouds of dust that were impressively illuminated by the torchlight.

On the following morning all our gear was coated by a fine ochre powder. The silt had even penetrated into the locked up car where it had evenly distributed. We started early towards a hill chain several kilometers northwards. The feature was named 'Abwaab as-Sabr' in our maps meaning as much as 'The Gates of Patience'.

There is a saying in Arab that goes: ‚no crowd ever waited at the gates of patience', I explained. 'Good' replied Thomas, 'then this place will at least be quite unsearched'.

‚Rub' al-Khali 005-1' in situ

Driving was particularly exhausting that day. Repeatedly we ploughed at high speed through extended deep sand and gypsum fields which were almost impossible to spot due to the quick moving dust on the surface. The complete surface seemed to be in constant movement. Additionally abundant roots and a confusing patchwork of flat contourless depressions and ridges made searching in the area a challenging task. The air was so dry that speaking was only possible after sipping from the water bottle. On the other hand with a maximum of 100°F temperatures remained quite chilly.

Around 10:00a.m Thomas found the first meteorite. He was prospecting on foot and because the sun was shining from the right he had only watched his left side when suddenly he turned around to gain some general orientation. On this occasion he discovered that he had just passed two steps from a pitch black meteorite. The 700g mass had patiently waited on the eroded slope of a shallow hill a couple of ten thousand years for Thomas to pick it up. When I joined Thomas to shoot some in situ images of his find I found another weathered fragment a few steps away. We recorded the two masses under the field name 'Rub' al-Khali 004' in the log book and then decided to continue separately by foot and by car further towards the North.

Visibility got no better until noon and beyond a distance of three hundred meters I could spot Thomas, who was walking around in a white dischdascha, only with the help of the binoculars. Keeping the sun at my three o' clock position, avoiding the treacherous deep sand fields and trying not loose Thomas out of sight in the confusing terrain was a matter of sweat and patience.

Repeatedly I had to let pass promising targets because had I stopped the Land Cruiser near them I would have sunken the heavy vehicle in the fesch fesch to its hubs. Instead I had to steer the jeep on top of the next safe patch of bedrock where it often came to a halt smelling nastily of the clutch.

Close shot of ‚Rub' al-Khali 005-1'. The mass is embedded two thirds in the sand and is most probably paired with field number 005. It weighs 40g, the scale cube has 1cm each side

Regaining traction was often possible only by quick kicking and releasing the clutch at high speed. After parking the car on solid limestone I would find myself walking back through the deep sand along my tracks only to discover that the alleged potential target was in fact a flint stone or the cast shadow of a pebble.

Although we had agreed that the team member prospecting on foot would always have to maintain eye contact with the car, at some point there was no trace to be seen of my team mate. He had simply disappeared. 'This is going to be a dry day for Thomas' I thought, for against my advice, he hadn't even taken his canteen, when he walked off. 'I should have better sent an unmanned sample return mission'. I parked on a bank, grabbed for the binoculars and climbed on the car's roof. Thoroughly I scanned the plain and the shallow hill chain behind it, where I had last seen Thomas walking along the ridge. I saw nothing but a group of dust devils swirling across the plane.

Between my position and the ridge where Thomas had vanished was a fesch fesch field some two hundred meters wide. Exactly the one I had just crossed drenched in sweat. Judging the depth of my tracks with the Hensoldt glass I tried to figure a better passage for the way back. At some places from under the ochre sand white gypsum had been turned up. Even when walking on foot I had sunken into the liquid like silt ankle deep at these spots. Not exactly the kind of ground you would want to drive a two ton Land Cruiser upon, if you could avoid it.

I waited another twenty minutes but to no avail. To get a better overview closer to his lat position I had to go through it, once again. I swung myself behind the wheel and after a wild fishtailing cruise I had just touched safe ground at the foot of the ridge when Thomas appeared, jovially strolling in his wavy robe, like Emir Musa on his way to the city of brass.

Dust coated I jumped off the car to remind my companion of the consequences should he get lost for good. In doing so I called the bloated camel to his memory and admonished improvement on his side. Thomas however, innocently replied he had pursued a very agile specimen of Phrynocephalus maculatus which he tried to photograph. This argument made sense to me and so I decided to let the matter rest.

On my way back to the car I could barely keep myself from stepping on a small black pebble that lay between the tire tracks. The little piece of charcoal seemed highly suspicious to me. And indeed, like the drawing of a silvery spider web there were delicate contraction cracks visible on the drab black velvet like fusion rind. A texture typical for the surfaces of freshly fallen meteorites. When it comes to stainlessness it doesn't get any better, so if this wasn't a meteorite, I wouldn't know what else to look for. Gladly for us it was a meteorite and what a nice one. To be more precise, a peanut sized stone of seven grams, but a notably splendid specimen. Despite the low weight the find was sufficient to put us in high spirits for the rest of the day.

Martian like landscape in the Empty Quarter

We stopped on the spot for a noon break and to reward us with a light meal. Because of the persistent wind which would have made dealing with the gas stove a challenging task we renounced from a hot dish and chose canned tuna instead. Fortunately we've had the smart sense to bunker the latter in countless variations and pallet-wise.

Without explicitly mentioning it we both hoped for a strewn field of this fine material. At least we wanted to make a second find of the fall that had produced such a pristine stone. How would even the larger masses look like? But at the same time we knew that chances were few to discover such a strewn field. If there really was one, then this could be located in any point of the compass. Larger, easier to find masses could be umpteen kilometers away.

Nevertheless we combed the wider area on foot for the rest of the day. Every once in an hour we relocated the Land Cruiser some three hundred meter further down the valley and away from the recent find. At late afternoon the landscape around us had morphed into a Martian like scenery. Sky and horizon had merged into a leaden grey while the sandblasted ochre gravel plains were frequently obscured by thick and fast moving rust colored dust devils. It seemed they wouldn't stop until the rest of the soil would become air-borne too and join them.

Like chameleons we had by now adopted the color of the terrain around us, for the fine grit dust excellently adhered to skin and wear. Hooded like a mummy I doggedly walked my search track in the grim dust storm. From time to time I turned around to see how Thomas did.

All of a sudden he gesticulates at me like a scalded cat. I see that he is calling but although he is barely two hundred meters away from me I can not hear him due to the furious wind. But it's clear anyway; he must have made another find. How exciting this business is, I think to myself, as I dive for the car, jump behind the wheel and drive over to him. 'We have a strewn field" he says with a broad smile.

As I see the stone, I double my efforts enthusiastically congratulating Thomas on his achievement. 'This looks paired indeed" I confirm his assumption. The mass, larger than our previous find, was good for thirty of forty grams. Most of it still stuck in the soil, only a quarter protruded from the surface. Like the other one this piece displayed minute contraction cracks on a fresh velvet textured fusion rind. Where a small polygon of the crust had blistered off the blowing sand had milled a tiny depression into the matrix of the meteorite. A sign that the meteorite was not of such a recent fall as our first impression had let us to believe. Compared with the other meteorites littering the vast gravel plains of the Rub' al-Khali and of which some had terrestrial ages of 250,000 years, this find was yet an extraordinary exception. In geological terms the fall occurred the blink of an eye ago, so to say.

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