The Buritizal meteorite: classification of a new Brazilian chondrite

On August 14, 1967, the reporter Saulo Gomes, working at TV Tupi, went to a small city in the State of São Paulo called Buritizal to investigate reports of a meteorite fall and write a newspaper report. He actually recovered three fragments of the meteorite at a small farm. In 2014, he donated one of the fragments to the Museu Nacional of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (MN/UFRJ). We named this meteorite Buritizal and studied its petrology, geochemistry, magnetic properties and cathodoluminescence with the intent to determine the petrologic classification of the meteorite. In this manner, the Buritizal meteorite is classified as an ordinary chondrite LL 3.2 breccia (as indicated by lithic fragments). The meteorite consists of ~ 2% of metallic Fe,Ni and many well-defined chondrules with ~ 0.8 mm in average diameter. An ultramafic ferromagnesian mineralogy is predominant in the meteorite, represented by olivine, orthopyroxene, clinopyroxene, Fe-Ni alloy, troilite and glass. The total iron content was calculated as 20.88 wt%. Furthermore, the meteorite was classified as weathering grade W1 and shock stage S3. Buritizal is the 25th observed meteorite fall recovered in Brazil, of 70 meteorites known from Brazil. Thus, the study of the Buritizal meteorite is very important and relevant for the Brazilian scientific community.