The largest mineral museum in the Great Lakes region has expanded its collection with a significant new addition. The A.E. Seaman Mineral Museum on Michigan Tech’s campus recently added a meteorite to its display case. Graham Wilson donated the meteorite to the museum last year.
“He purchased a meteorite, a fairly good size, in 2010, and then he had it expertly sliced, polished, and prepared and preserved into four slices,” said John Jaszczak, director of the A.E. Seaman Mineral Museum. “One of them is at the Royal Ontario Museum. So we were just delighted to have this one brought here, because the textures are just fantastic.”
The specimen weighs 20 kilograms — much larger than meteorites that recently broke up over northeast Ohio. Jaszczak identified the meteorite as the Seymchan meteorite, discovered in 1967.
“It’s called the Seymchan meteorite. It was discovered in far eastern Russia, I think, in 1967. But then later expeditions found a lot more material, so quite a bit of material has made it to the markets,” Jaszczak said. “This is a beautiful large one. I think it weighs about 44 pounds.”
Most meteorites undergo significant changes during atmospheric entry, according to Jaszczak.
“Most meteorites, when they enter the atmosphere, are much, much larger than any that are found by the time they hit the Earth, because they blow up and get demolished and burn up in the atmosphere,” he said. “This one, actually, I’m not sure what the initial size was estimated to be, but it would have been very large, because there’s quite a lot of material of this Russian Seymchan meteorite that was originally discovered.”
The slice on display at the A.E. Seaman Mineral Museum features crisscrossing and overlapping crystals made from iron and nickel alloy called a Widmanstätten pattern. Jaszczak explained that the pattern cannot be replicated to the same size in the Seymchan meteorite because of the time required for formation.
“And in metallurgical studies, these structures form on a much, much smaller scale because as these liquid alloy or liquid iron nickel melts, cool slowly, and crystallize, it takes a lot of time to form these crystallites,” he said. “So apparently, these kinds of structures at this size can’t form in the laboratory or in industry on Earth because it took a long time to form these structures but they’re basically from different kinds of nickel-iron alloys that have cooled very, very slowly.”
The museum displays the new meteorite near other celestial specimens. The collection includes a sample of the Grand Rapids meteorite and the Hamburg meteorite, with a photo from the observation and collection in 2018 near Hamburg, Michigan. The museum also features moondust donated by Nobel Laureate and Class of 1931 graduate Melvin Calvin.
“Northern Michigan even is gifted with all kinds of mineral treasures and also really important for society. So we cover all those topics,” Jaszczak said. “We have three galleries dedicated to the geographical representation of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan minerals, the Iron District around Lake Superior, minerals of the Midwest. But then we have a collection of minerals from all over the world.”
The A.E. Seaman Mineral Museum serves as Michigan’s official mineral museum and unofficially as the mineral museum of the Great Lakes. The museum holds the largest collection of minerals available to the public in the region. Visitors can explore exhibits on fluorescent rocks, the iron and copper industries and more.
The A.E. Seaman Mineral Museum operates Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. During peak tourism season between June and August, the museum opens seven days a week. Admission costs $9 for adults, with free entry for children under 8. Senior admission costs $8. Museum staff provides interactive coloring books for children to use during family tours.
