Native Iron (rare, early 1900s) ex Kidwell

Item Description

The specimen comprises a portion of a basalt nodule that contains elemental Iron. It may not be pretty, but this is a very important specimen for the species as a native element, and for historic geology. Native Iron is extremely rare in igneous rocks of the Earth's crust, even though it forms the majority of the Earth's core. Here we have an extremely rare specimen of terrestrial Native Iron disseminated in basalt rock from the remote Disko Island of Greenland. Much of the Native Iron on the Earth's surface is in fact extraterrestrial in origin and present in meteorites. This is from the type locality occurrence for native terrestrial Iron in Greenland, and is richly speckled with bright, metallic flecks of Native Iron to 1.5 mm. This is old, rare and seldom seen material collected during museum expeditions (mostly from Europe) in the late 1800s and in the 1920s. We only see these for sale as old collections turn up, and they should all be valued as the important scientific rarity they are, generally over $1000 for any decent sample. Ex Al Kidwell Collection. 135 grams.