A statistical comparison of Antarctic finds and modern falls: Mass frequency distributions and relative abundance by type

• Published in: Meteoritics
• Main Authors: Harvey, R. P., Cassidy, W. A.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 1989
• Subjects: General Earth and Planetary Sciences; General Environmental Science; Allan Hills; Antarctic; The Antarctic; Yamato; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1945-5100.1989.tb00935.x; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1111%2Fj.1945-5100.1989.tb00935.x; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1945-5100.1989.tb00935.x

Abstract— The relative abundance of different compositional types and mass frequency distributions are presented for four meteorite samples (the modern falls, Antarctic finds, Yamato finds and Allan Hills Main Icefield finds). The modern falls sample represents continuous collection of a known number of falls over a short timespan, while the Antarctic samples represent a longer timespan and an unknown number of falls. The Allan Hills Main Icefield sample has many desirable collection characteristics indicating it best represents Antarctic meteorites. By retabulating the modern falls to create a sample with characteristics similar to those of the Allan Hills Main Icefield finds, we can directly compare the two. The mass frequency distributions of Antarctic samples exhibit a tail toward the larger sizes and thus differ from that of the modern falls (which approximates a normal curve). In general, normal and power law models prove to be inadequate to explain the observed mass frequency distributions, possibly because they fail to correctly account for atmospheric and collection effects. Non‐parametric statistics show that it is unlikely that the two are good samples of a single steady‐state meteoritic complex. In addition, there is an excess in numbers of small H chondrites in Allan Hills Main Icefield finds relative to modern falls which is not easy to explain given modern showerfall rates of occurrence. This supports the view that the delivery of meteoritic material to Earth might be variable over the short timescale represented by these samples.