Antarctic Meteorites. Present and Future Studies.

Only 2400 meteorites were known in worldwide before the find of the Antarctic meteorites.However, during the last 20 years, 12000 meteorites have been collected from Antarctica by the efforts mainly of the Japanese and US expeditions.Over 8500 of them are Japanese collection, which is the largest one in the world.Antarctic meteorites included not only all known types but new types and numerous unique specimens.The meteorites are among the most primitive materials in the early solar system.Those meteorites have been studied by numerous scientists of a variety of background including petrology, mineralogy, geochemistry, organic chemistry, geophysics, isotopic-chronology and geomagnetism.They provided many excellent results including identifications of new types, detail petrology on primitive meteorites, reconstruction of HED meteorite parent body, origin of ureilites and detail isotopic data of various meteorites.However much more work remains to be done before we can fully understand the origin and evolution of the solar system including the earth as one of the planets. 1.