Orotukan - Iron, Ungrouped - Slice - 8.96g - Magadan Region

This 8.96g slice of Orotukan has been etched to reveal a dense Widmanstätten pattern, with many narrow kamacite bands crossing one another at sharp angles across the whole face. The closely woven structure gives this piece a busier, more intricate look than some of the other slices from the same mass. It is supplied in a clear display case with an OuterSpacer Meteorites label.

Orotukan is an iron meteorite found in August 2022 at the foot of a river valley slope, downstream of Strelka Creek, a small tributary of the Orotukan River in the Magadan region. It was approved by the Meteoritical Society in December 2022 and published in Meteoritical Bulletin 111, with a total recorded mass of 555kg.

Structurally, Orotukan is a medium octahedrite, with kamacite bands 0.7 to 1.1mm wide forming a well-developed Widmanstätten pattern. This pattern grows only when iron-nickel metal cools extremely slowly, over very long periods, which is why it is one of the clearest signatures of a meteoritic iron. Orotukan's chemistry is what sets it apart. Its gallium and germanium contents resemble those of the IAB and IID irons, but its gold and germanium values fall outside both groups, so the classifying team placed it among the ungrouped irons. Ungrouped irons are generally interpreted as samples of parent bodies that are otherwise unrepresented, or poorly represented, in meteorite collections, though that remains an interpretation rather than something proven for each individual meteorite.

For collectors, Orotukan combines a bold etched pattern with a recent, formally documented classification and a clearly recorded find locality. Ungrouped irons are far less common in collections than members of the large iron groups, with only around 150 approved worldwide, which makes a well-presented etched slice like this one a useful reference specimen as well as a fine display piece.