The icy plains of Antarctica are a magnet for meteorite hunters such as Maria Valdes, a research scientist at the Field Museum of Natural History and the University of Chicago.
Some 1,000 space rocks are found in the region each year.
Their dark hue is easy to spot in the white expanse.
“Antarctica, a desert of ice, provides an ideal background for meteorite recovery — go to the right place, and any rock you find must have fallen from the sky,” said Valdes, who visited the region as part of an expedition team in late 2022 and early 2023 for her work at the museum’s Robert A. Pritzker Center for Meteoritics and Polar Studies. The international team found five meteorites.
“We stumbled across an enormous brown stone sitting by itself in the middle of an ice field. It was a little bit smaller than a bowling ball and quite heavy — 7.6 kg (about 17 pounds),” she said via email.
“I had seen and handled so many meteorites in my career, but finding one yourself is such a different feeling.”
