Famous strewn fields
When a meteoroid breaks apart in the air, its pieces do not land in one place. They rain down over an oval of ground called a strewn field, with the smallest stones at one end and the heaviest at the other. These are the world's most famous strewn fields: how each fall happened, the shape of its ellipse, where the big and small pieces landed, and what the law says about collecting there today.
How a strewn field forms
- Why an ellipse?
- A meteoroid enters the atmosphere at between about 11 and 72 kilometres per second. Air pressure builds in front of it until the rock breaks, often several times. Every fragment then slows down on its own. Within a few seconds the pieces lose their cosmic speed, stop glowing and fall in what is called dark flight, dropping at a few hundred kilometres per hour. Because they started from roughly the same path, they land along a stretched oval that points in the direction the meteoroid was travelling.
- Small first, big last
- Air brakes a small stone much more strongly than a large one, because a small stone has more surface for its weight. So the smallest fragments stop early and fall nearest the start of the track, while the heaviest masses carry their momentum furthest. This mass sorting is the rule searchers use: if you find tiny stones, the big ones lie further down the line.
- Wind, height and luck
- During dark flight, wind pushes the slowest-falling stones sideways, so the smallest pieces can drift hundreds of metres or even kilometres. The height of each break-up, the angle of entry and the shapes of the stones all change where they land. Modern searchers model all of this from camera footage, radar and weather data before they set foot in a field.
- Strewn fields and the law
- A strewn field crosses farms, villages, roads and sometimes protected land. Each piece belongs according to the law of the place where it landed, which may be the landowner, the finder or the state. Always get permission before searching, and check the country's rules in our guide to meteorite law.
The fields
Sikhote-Alin
The largest iron meteorite shower ever witnessed, which peppered a snowy forest with more than a hundred craters.
Namibia · prehistoricGibeon
One of the largest strewn fields on Earth: a prehistoric shower of fine-patterned iron across southern Namibia.
Argentina · about 4,000 to 4,500 years agoCampo del Cielo
A crater field on the Gran Chaco plains that has given up more than 100 tonnes of iron, including two of the heaviest meteorites known.
Russia · 15 February 2013Chelyabinsk
The airburst that shattered windows across a city, then scattered thousands of small stones and one giant into a frozen lake.
United Kingdom · 28 February 2021Winchcombe
The first meteorite fall recovered in Britain for 30 years, found on a driveway and in a sheep field thanks to doorbell cameras and careful modelling.
Mexico · 8 February 1969Allende
The largest carbonaceous chondrite ever found, spread along a 50-kilometre field in the Chihuahua desert.
Australia · 28 September 1969Murchison
A Sunday-morning shower of carbon-rich stones over a country town in Victoria, which became one of the most studied rocks in the world.
United States · 19 July 1912Holbrook
About 14,000 stones, most no bigger than peas, that are still being found in the Arizona desert more than a century later.
Poland · 30 January 1868Pułtusk
One of the most abundant showers ever recorded: tens of thousands of stones, the famous 'Pultusk peas', over snow and river ice.
France · 26 April 1803L'Aigle
The first strewn field ever mapped, which helped persuade scientists that stones really do fall from the sky.
Sudan · 7 October 2008Almahata Sitta
The first asteroid spotted in space before it hit Earth, and the first strewn field searched along a track predicted in advance.
Costa Rica · 23 April 2019Aguas Zarcas
A shower of rare carbon-rich stones that crashed through a house roof and hit a doghouse in the Costa Rican countryside.
China · 8 March 1976Jilin
A shower that included the heaviest stony meteorite ever seen to fall, a 1,770-kilogram stone that punched deep into frozen ground.
Uganda · 14 August 1992Mbale
A shower over a busy town near Mount Elgon, in which a small fragment struck a boy after being slowed by banana leaves.
United States · 22 April 2012Sutter's Mill
A fragile carbonaceous fall in California gold country, found with the help of weather radar.
Slovakia · 28 February 2010Košice
A night-time fall recorded by security cameras in Hungary, whose strewn field became a model of careful mapping.
Morocco · 18 July 2011Tissint
Only the fifth Martian meteorite seen to fall, its glossy black stones gathered from a remote desert valley months later.
United States · prehistoric; first found 1882Brenham
A prehistoric pallasite shower on Kansas farmland, with one of the smallest impact craters known.
No strewn fields match that search.
Related pages
- What is a strewn field?
- How do meteorite hunters search a strewn field?
- How do I start looking for meteorites?
Glossary: Strewn field, Strewn field map, Dense collection area