What is the Meteoritical Bulletin?
The Meteoritical Bulletin is the official record of newly approved meteorite names, published by the Meteoritical Society, together with a searchable database of all recognised meteorites.
The Meteoritical Society is the international scientific organisation for the study of meteorites and related material. One of its most important jobs is deciding which meteorites are officially recognised, and the Meteoritical Bulletin is where those decisions are announced. Each new entry records the approved name, where and when the meteorite fell or was found, its classification, its total known mass, who classified it and where the type specimen is kept.
The Bulletin has been issued since the 1950s. For many years it appeared as numbered reports, now published in the society's journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science. Today it is backed by an online database that includes every approved meteorite, so a collector or researcher can look up a name such as Winchcombe or NWA 7034 and see its official details. Behind the scenes, the society's Nomenclature Committee reviews each submission, checking that the classification is sound and that naming rules and type-specimen requirements are met.
Why does this matter to the rest of us? First, it is the best defence against fakes and misidentifications. If a seller offers a named meteorite, you can confirm that the name exists and that the stated type matches. A specimen labelled "chondrite" with no approved name has never passed this check. Second, the Bulletin is a remarkable scientific archive: it shows how many meteorites of each type are known, where they cluster, and how discoveries have changed over time, from a few falls a year in old records to thousands of desert and Antarctic finds today.
The database also records extra notes, such as whether a meteorite was a witnessed fall, pairings with other specimens and changes of classification, making it the first place specialists check when studying any meteorite.