An “unbelievably rare” piece of Mars – the largest ever found on Earth – has sold for $4.3m (\u00a33.2m) at a New York auction on Wednesday. <\/p>\n
The meteorite known as NWA 16788 weighs 54lb (24.5kg) and is nearly 15in (38.1cm) long, according to Sotheby’s. <\/p>\n
It was discovered in a remote region of Niger in November 2023 and is 70% larger than the next biggest piece of Mars that has been recovered, the auction house said. <\/p>\n
Meteorites are the remains of rock left after an asteroid or comet passes through Earth’s atmosphere.<\/p>\n
Sotheby’s auction house described the meteorite, a reddish brown rock, as “unbelievably rare”. Only about 400 Martian meteorites have ever been found on Earth.<\/p>\n
“This is the largest piece of Mars on planet Earth. The odds of this getting from there to here are astronomically small,” Cassandra Hatton, vice-chairman of science and natural history at Sotheby’s, said in a video posted online. <\/p>\n
“Remember that approximately 70% of Earth’s surface is covered in water. So we’re incredibly lucky that this landed on dry land instead of the middle of the ocean where we could actually find it.”<\/p>\n
It remains unclear where the meteorite will end up as information about the sale will remain private. <\/p>\n
Additional taxes and fees brought the total price of the rock up to about $5.3m, Sotheby’s said. <\/p>\n
At the Wednesday auction, which featured more than 100 items, a Ceratosaurus skeleton from the late Jurassic period sold for $26m and the skull of a Pachycephalosaurus sold for $1.4m. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An “unbelievably rare” piece of Mars – the largest ever found on Earth – has sold for $4.3m…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-1877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}