Famous meteorites
The 60 most important meteorites ever found: record-breaking irons, falls that changed science, rocks from the Moon and Mars, and the stones that hit houses, cars and people.
Hoba
The heaviest known meteorite on Earth has never been moved from the spot where it landed.
United States · 1902Willamette
America's largest meteorite was secretly hauled through a forest by a settler – and is sacred to the people who knew it first.
Greenland · 1818Cape York
For centuries the Inuit of north-west Greenland made blades from a meteorite – until an explorer shipped it to New York.
Argentina · 1576Campo del Cielo
A field of small craters in northern Argentina, where more than 100 tonnes of iron fell from the sky about four thousand years ago.
Namibia · 1838Gibeon
A prehistoric shower of iron across southern Namibia, whose crystal patterns now gleam on watch faces and rings.
Russia · 1947Sikhote-Alin
In 1947 an iron meteoroid shattered over the Russian Far East, raining tonnes of metal and blasting more than 100 craters.
Mexico · 1969Allende
The meteorite that fell on a Mexican village months before Apollo 11 – and turned out to hold the oldest solids in the Solar System.
Australia · 1969Murchison
A stone that fell on an Australian town in 1969, packed with the chemical building blocks of life.
Russia · 2013Chelyabinsk
The 2013 airburst over Russia that shattered thousands of windows and reminded the world that asteroid impacts still happen.
United Kingdom · 2021Winchcombe
The 2021 fireball filmed across Britain that delivered the UK's first carbonaceous chondrite – onto a family's driveway.
France · 1492Ensisheim
The stone that fell on Alsace in 1492 is the oldest European meteorite with a known fall date that still survives.
France · 1803L'Aigle
The 1803 shower of stones in Normandy that finally convinced scientists rocks really do fall from the sky.
United Kingdom · 1795Wold Cottage
England's largest single meteorite landed beside a Yorkshire ploughman in 1795 – and helped prove that stones fall from the sky.
United States · 1992Peekskill
The 1992 fireball filmed by football fans across the eastern United States that ended up in the boot of a parked car.
United States · 1954Sylacauga
In 1954 a meteorite crashed through a roof in Alabama and struck Ann Hodges – the first well-documented person hit by a meteorite.
Antarctica · 1984ALH 84001
A potato-sized rock from Mars that sparked a worldwide debate about life beyond Earth.
Egypt · 1911Nakhla
The 1911 Egyptian fall that gave its name to a whole family of Martian meteorites – and a story about a very unlucky dog.
Nigeria · 1962Zagami
A piece of Martian lava that landed close to a Nigerian farmer in 1962 – the largest single Martian stone ever seen to fall.
Morocco · 2011Tissint
In 2011 a fireball over the Moroccan desert delivered the freshest pieces of Mars that scientists had seen in half a century.
Argentina · 1951Esquel
A Patagonian pallasite whose glowing golden-green crystals have made it one of the most beautiful meteorites ever found.
China · 2000Fukang
A tonne-sized pallasite from the mountains of north-west China, packed with gem-like crystals.
United States · 1891Canyon Diablo
The iron that made Meteor Crater in Arizona – and helped scientists measure the age of the Earth.
France · 1864Orgueil
A crumbly black meteorite from 1864 whose chemistry is the closest match on Earth to the Sun itself.
Canada · 2000Tagish Lake
A fragile carbon-rich meteorite that fell onto a frozen Canadian lake in 2000 and was collected without being touched by bare hands.
Sudan · 2008Almahata Sitta
The first asteroid spotted in space before it hit the Earth – and the meteorites later collected from the Sudanese desert.
Yemen · 1980Kaidun
A small stone that fell on a military base in Yemen in 1980 and turned out to be a jigsaw of many different worlds.
United States · 1948Norton County
A shower of pale, almost iron-free stones over the Kansas–Nebraska border in 1948, including the largest aubrite ever found.
United Kingdom · 1965Barwell
On Christmas Eve 1965 a shower of stones fell on a Leicestershire village, the largest meteorite fall recorded in Britain.
Uganda · 1992Mbale
In 1992 hundreds of stones rained on a town in eastern Uganda – and one small piece bounced off a banana tree onto a boy's head.
Peru · 2007Carancas
In 2007 a stony meteorite blasted a crater near Lake Titicaca – something scientists had not expected a rock its size to do.
United States · 2012Sutter's Mill
In 2012 a rare carbon-rich meteorite fell on the very spot where the California Gold Rush began – and weather radar helped find it.
China · 1976Jilin
In 1976 a meteorite shower over north-east China included a single stone of about 1,770 kilograms – the largest stony meteorite ever seen to fall.
Poland · 1868Pultusk
In 1868 a fireball over Poland released one of the largest showers of stones ever recorded – tens of thousands of them.
United States · 1912Holbrook
In 1912 thousands of stones rained down near a railway station in the Arizona desert – and people are still finding them.
Sweden · 1906Muonionalusta
An iron meteorite from Arctic Sweden that fell long before the last ice age – and was carried by glaciers before anyone found it.
Australia · 1911Mundrabilla
Two giant iron masses found on Australia's Nullarbor Plain in 1966, packed with unusual sulphide nodules.
Mexico · 1863Bacubirito
A long, heavy iron from the mountains of north-western Mexico, now displayed at a science centre in Culiacán.
United States · 1882Brenham
A Kansas farmer's wife collected heavy black rocks for years – and proved scientists wrong about where they came from.
Chile · 1822Imilac
A pallasite scattered across the Atacama Desert, whose weathered pieces look like metal sponges.
Russia · 1967Seymchan
Found in a stream in Russia's Far East in 1967 and thought to be an ordinary iron – until pieces with gem-like crystals turned up decades later.
Northwest Africa · 2011NWA 7034
Nicknamed Black Beauty, this dark Martian breccia contains the oldest pieces of Mars yet found.
South Sudan · 1942Kapoeta
A howardite that fell in South Sudan in 1942 – a piece of the battered surface of the asteroid Vesta.
Czech Republic · 1808Stannern
A shower of basaltic stones that fell on Moravia in 1808 and gave its name to a distinctive kind of lava from Vesta.
France · 1821Juvinas
A single basaltic stone that fell in southern France in 1821 and helped show that some asteroids once had volcanoes.
Australia · 1960Millbillillie
A eucrite that fell in the Western Australian outback in 1960, famous for its glossy black fusion crust.
Tunisia · 1931Tatahouine
A meteorite that shattered into green crystals in the Tunisian desert in 1931 – a fragment from deep inside the asteroid Vesta.
France · 1815Chassigny
Seen to fall in France in 1815, this olivine-rich stone was the first known Martian meteorite to be witnessed falling.
India · 1865Shergotty
The 1865 fall in India that gave its name to the most common family of Martian meteorites.
Finland · 1899Bjurböle
A meteorite that crashed through sea ice in Finland in 1899 and is so crumbly that its chondrules fall out like marbles.
Canada · 1952Abee
A 107-kilogram enstatite chondrite that fell on a Canadian wheat field in 1952 – a rare sample of rock formed with almost no oxygen.
United States · 1879Estherville
In 1879 a meteorite half metal and half stone crashed onto the Iowa prairie – a rare mesosiderite, still a puzzle to scientists.
Chile · 1861Vaca Muerta
A mesosiderite scattered across the Atacama Desert, named after a 'dead cow' and found by prospectors in the 19th century.
Burkina Faso · 1960Gao-Guenie
A shower of stones over Burkina Faso in 1960 that became one of the most widely distributed meteorites in the world.
United States · 1807Weston
The 1807 Connecticut fall investigated by two Yale professors – the first meteorite fall in the Americas to be studied scientifically.
Antarctica · 1982Allan Hills 81005
A golf-ball-sized rock found in Antarctica in 1982 – the first meteorite recognised as coming from the Moon.
Libya · 1998Dar al Gani 476
A Martian rock found in the Libyan Sahara in 1998, packed with olivine crystals and part of a family of desert finds.
Russia · 2018Ozerki
A bright fireball over Russia in June 2018 that delivered fresh stones to villagers and scientists within days.
Slovakia · 2010Košice
A 2010 fireball over Slovakia caught on security cameras, whose recovered stones were traced back to their orbit in space.
Czech Republic · 1991Benešov
A fireball photographed over the Czech Republic in 1991 whose meteorites were found only 20 years later – and turned out to be a mixture of types.
Russia · 1908Tunguska event
In 1908 a cosmic body exploded over Siberia and flattened some 80 million trees – the largest impact event in recorded history.
No meteorites match that search.