I found this last week..tested it.

[JSparrow]

I found this in a ditch by a tall dirt wall created by erosion. Way out in rural southeast Alabama far from anywhere. I was hunting for arrowheads. I found a broken one and some petrified wood that fell out of the earth overtime and into the ditch where water washed down a hill. I saw this and thought it looked odd l..it was covered in mud but I took it home and washed it off. It weighs about 75 g. I haven't filed it because I don't have a file. Matches meteorites I've seen perfectly. Opinions? ATTACH=CONFIG]1791495[/ATTACH]

 

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[chub]

What size is it? Is it magnetic? Good pics.

Chub

 

[JSparrow]

What size is it? Is it magnetic? Good pics.

Chub

Yes, it moves a magnet but the thhe magnet doesn't stick to it. It pulls it though, I only have a weak magnet. It's just over 2 in. wide.

 

[Red-Coat]

When considering whether an item might be a meteorite, you firstly have to consider what type of meteorite it might be, and then apply appropriate tests to confirm or otherwise. Not all meteorites have the same appearance or properties.

I expect when you were looking at web pictures, you were looking at "Iron" meteorites. Your rock does have a superficial resemblance to weathered specimens in that class and its sub-classifications. However, they're composed principally of metallic iron plus some nickel and are always strongly attracted to a magnet (although that of course is not a definitive diagnostic since many terrestrial materials have similar magnetic properties).

For it to have such weak attraction to a magnet, it would have to be a "Stony" meteorite. Those also usually have moderate to strong magnetic properties since they often contain significant amounts of metallic iron, so it would have to be either a very low metal chondrite or an achondrite without metallic veins. It doesn't have the surface appearance of any of those classes.

 

[GoldieLocks]

I'm confused, are you ruling out the idea that it's just petrified wood?

 

[JSparrow]

When considering whether an item might be a meteorite, you firstly have to consider what type of meteorite it might be, and then apply appropriate tests to confirm or otherwise. Not all meteorites have the same appearance or properties.

I expect when you were looking at web pictures, you were looking at "Iron" meteorites. Your rock does have a superficial resemblance to weathered specimens in that class and its sub-classifications. However, they're composed principally of metallic iron plus some nickel and are always strongly attracted to a magnet (although that of course is not a definitive diagnostic since many terrestrial materials have similar magnetic properties).

For it to have such weak attraction to a magnet, it would have to be a "Stony" meteorite. Those also usually have moderate to strong magnetic properties since they often contain significant amounts of metallic iron, so it would have to be either a very low metal chondrite or an achondrite without metallic veins. It doesn't have the surface appearance of any of those classes.

Thank you for your in depth reply. I actually have been studying this rock obsessively since I found it. I've compared it to every classified and unclassified meteorite type that I've found. It looks very much like a stony-iron meteorite from the meteorite exchange website. It also looks very similar to some examples I've seen of carbonaceous chondrite. I really need to get a file. The magnet I have barely keeps a piece of paper on the refrigerator.

 

[Red-Coat]

Thank you for your in depth reply. I actually have been studying this rock obsessively since I found it. I've compared it to every classified and unclassified meteorite type that I've found. It looks very much like a stony-iron meteorite from the meteorite exchange website. It also looks very similar to some examples I've seen of carbonaceous chondrite. I really need to get a file. The magnet I have barely keeps a piece of paper on the refrigerator.

First off you need a better magnet!

Please take a look at the pictures of hematite nodules at this link and then tell me you have something which looks less like some of those specimens and more like the meteorite pictures you found.

iron-oxide concretions and nodules

Better still, please post links to pictures you’ve seen on the web of a stony iron which you think your rock "looks very much like" or a carbonaceous chondrite which is "very similar" to it (a bit of a shift from your original statement that it "matches meteorites I've found perfectly", incidentally).

As you say, there’s nothing to suggest its petrified wood but everything to suggest its hematite or some other terrestrial iron-rich material. Sometimes, we don’t bother to classify these rocks and just generically refer to them as “ironstone” because they may be a complex containing one or more of any of the following: iron oxides (limonite, hematite or magnetite) iron carbonates (siderite) or iron silicates (chamosite). Whether or not they are magnetic depends both on the form in which the iron mineral was originally present and also the degree to which it has chemically altered due to weathering. That also affects the colour. Hematite can be black through brown to red depending on the oxidation state of the iron but most impure mineral iron-rich rocks usually have at least some typical ‘rusty’ colouration from weathering.

Most iron minerals are non-magnetic, with magnetite being the notable exception. When other iron minerals such as hematite are found to be magnetic it’s almost always because they are impure and have at least some magnetite present as an accessory mineral.

 

[Rookster]

The purple arrow is Purdy cool. Have you hit it with a hammer yet?

 

[SnowDigger]

I thought I had possibly found a meteorite earlier this year, and found this site helpful:
https://geology.com/meteorites/meteorite-identification.shtml
You might have already been there, but if not, it was pretty good, even though it turns out mine wasn't a meteorite. I found the info on Regmaglypts (kind of like fingerprints on meteorites) and the fact that there are no vesicles on meteorites very useful. Hope that might help your ID-ing!