View source for Chinguetti meteorite

{{Short description|Alleged find near Chinguetti, Mauritania}}
{{Infobox meteorite
|Name                      = Chinguetti meteorite
|Alternative names         =
|Image                     = Chinguetti meteorite.jpg
|Image_caption             = Chinguetti slice at the National Museum of Natural History, USA.
|Type                      = Stony-iron
|Class                     = [[Mesosiderite]]
|Group                     = 
|Structural_classification = 
|Composition               = 
|Shock                     = 
|Weathering                = 
|Country                   = [[Mauritania]]
|Region                    = [[Chinguetti]]
|Lat_Long                  = <!-- {{coord|00|00|N|00|00|E|display=inline,title}} -->
|Observed_fall             = No
|Fall_date                 = 
|Found_date                = 1916
|TKW                       = 
|Image2                    = 
|Image2_caption            = 
}}
The '''Chinguetti meteorite''' is a find reputed to come from a large unconfirmed 'iron mountain' in Africa.

The existence of a huge stony-iron [[mesosiderite]] approximately 45 kilometers from the [[Sahara]]n city [[Chinguetti]], [[Mauritania]], has been a mystery since 1916, when Captain [[Gaston Ripert]], a French consular official, claimed to have discovered  'a huge iron hill {{convert|40|m}} high and {{convert|100|m}} long.' 

Ripert said that he had been guided blindfolded by a local chieftain to a natural source of [[iron]], after a 12-hour-long camel ride to the south-east of Chinguetti. 

He bagged a 4-kilogram fragment of the rock, which found its way to [[Paris]] some years later, where geologist [[Alfred Lacroix]] pronounced that it was an important discovery. However, despite the attempts of several expeditions since, the supposed meteorite could not be found again.

Ripert wrote to Professor [[Théodore Monod]] in 1934: 'I know that the general opinion is that the stone does not exist; that to some, I am purely and simply an impostor who picked up a metallic specimen. That to others, I am a simpleton who mistook a sandstone outcrop for an enormous meteorite. I shall do nothing to disabuse them, I know only what I saw.'  

Despite various searches over the years, Monod concluded in 1989 that Ripert had been mistaken: 'An error was made in the identification of the rock of a 40-metre hill that is entirely sedimentary with no trace of metal,' he wrote. 

In 1980, former French air force officer [[Jacques Gallouédec]] was carrying out aerial surveys for the Mauritanian water authority, when he spotted a strange semi-circular ground formation to the south-east of Chinguetti. He sent details to Théodore Monod, but the professor was unable to locate it.  

Finally, the Chinguetti fragment that was sent to Paris was analyzed again, and it was concluded that it could not have been from a meteorite larger than {{convert|80|cm|0|abbr=on}} in radius.  

==See also==
* [[Glossary of meteoritics]] 

==External links==
* http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/E/ends/meteorite1.html
* http://www.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk/etext/40/text/MAPS36Welten2.pdf
*[[National Geographic Channel]]: '' 'The meteorite that vanished' ''documentary. 

{{Meteorites}}
{{Meteorites by name}}

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[[Category:Meteorites found in Mauritania]]