A huge and “incredibly rare” chunk of Mars that crash-landed in the Sahara will go on sale for nearly $2m at auction.
Sotheby’s in New York is selling the 55-pound rock, named NWA 16788, for upwards of $1.6m, which it says is the largest piece of Mars on Earth.
The reddish-brown Martian rock travelled 140 million miles to Earth before it was found by a meteorite hunter in Niger in 2023, according to the auction house.
The rock is about 70 per cent larger than the next largest piece of Mars found on Earth and represents nearly 7 per cent of all Martian material currently on the planet, Sotheby’s said.
“This Martian meteorite is the largest piece of Mars we have ever found by a long shot,” Cassandra Hatton, vice chairman for science and natural history at Sotheby’s, told Fortune.
Hatton said the rock was sent off for testing to a specialized lab, which found it to be an “olivine-microgabbroic shergottite,” a type of rock formed from the slow cooling of magma.
It is also a rare find. There are only 400 Martian meteorites out of the more than 77,000 officially recognized meteorites found on Earth, Sotheby's says.
It also has a glassy surface, likely due to the high heat it experienced when it fell through Earth's atmosphere, Hatton said. “So that was their first clue that this wasn't just some big rock on the ground,” she said.
It's not clear exactly when the meteorite hit Earth, but testing shows it probably happened in recent years, Sotheby's said.
The meteorite was previously on exhibit at the Italian Space Agency in Rome. Sotheby's did not disclose the owner.
Meanwhile, an 11-foot-long dinosaur has also been listed for sale at the auction house this week and is estimated to sell for between $4 million and $6 million.
The juvenile Ceratosaurus nasicornis skeleton was found in 1996 near Laramie, Wyoming, at Bone Cabin Quarry.
It is believed to be from the late Cretaceous period, approximately 65 million years ago, Sotheby’s said. It will go up for sale on Wednesday.
Ceratosaurus dinosaurs were bipeds with short arms that appeared similar to the Tyrannosaurus rex, but smaller.
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