By Joanne Bailey-Boorsma
joanne@wktv.org
Many may recall the news flurry last fall around a 22.5-pound rock used to hold doors open was actually a meteorite worth about $100,000.
Central Michigan University’s Dr. Mona Sirbescu, at the rock owner’s request, helped identify the meteorite, which was has since been officially classified and approved by the Nomenclature Committee of Meteoritical Society. It is the sixth-largest of only 12 meteorites every found in Michigan.
Thursday, CMU will host a presentation and discussion about the Edmore Meteorite (it was found on a farm in Edmore) at 4 p.m. at CMU’s Opperman Auditorium in Park Library on the CMU Mount Pleasant campus.
The discussion will feature Sirbescu; David Mazurek, the meteorite’s owner; and Dr. Catherine Corrigan, a geologist and meteorite curator with the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
The event is free and open to the public. After the hour-long presentation, there will be discussion and refreshments from 5 to 6 p.m.
According to a 2018 article from CMU News, Mazurek obtained the meteorite in 1988 when he bought a farm in Edmore, Michigan, about 30 miles southwest of Mount Pleasant.
As the farmer was shown Mazurek around the property, they went out to a shed where Mazurek noticed the odd shaped rock. According to Mazurek, the farmer said it was a meteorite and that the farmer and his father saw it come down on their property in the 1930s.
A January 2018 meteor event in Michigan had Mazurek think of the rock and wonder if it was a meteorite and if it was worth anything. At the recommendation of a friend, he took it to Sirbescu at CMU’s College of Science and Engineering.
