Professor gets ahold of ancient meteorite

MARYVILLE, Mo. -- One of the rarest types of meteorites, which may date back 4.5 billion years, was kept in a Missouri garage for about two years before a student brought it into a geology teacher at Northwest Missouri State.

The student, who wants to remain anonymous, brought the rusty rock into Richard Felton's general geology class out of curiosity.

"We get a lot of things in here, most of them common," Felton said. "But I knew right away that this was something truly interesting."

Felton and the student polished away the layers of rust and found a shiny metallic surface beneath.

"It was looking more and more unusual as we worked on it," Felton said. "I didn't think it could be a meteorite, but I didn't give up on it, either."

Just after midnight, Felton stopped his frenzied research and testing. He didn't want to lose objectivity in his excitement.

"Geologists are a conservative bunch," he said. "I was still trying to convince myself that something this rare couldn't be sitting in my office."

'Oh my gosh'

He brought it to a colleague, Renee Rohs, an assistant professor of geology.

"I said, 'Oh my gosh, a stony-iron meteorite,'" the assistant professor of geology said.

Rohs took it to a University of Kansas professor, who confirmed her conclusions.

Rohs said stony-iron meteorites typically net between $2 and $10 per gram. In the mid-1980s, there were only 73 in the world, one of them found in Missouri, two in Kansas and one in Iowa.

A friend of the student who brought the meteorite to Felton found the rock in his field near Fairfax, and kept it in his garage for nearly two years.