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Fossils in meteorites?

   Hi folks,
     Read this today in the sci.astro newsgroup. Can anyone shed some light
on this? I heard of meteorites in fossils but not the reverse. 

Tom


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Mark Adkins  wrote on sci.astro:

Is anyone here aware that as long ago as the late 19th century (circa
1880) definite claims were made as to the finding of micro-fossils in
meteorites, that careful photographs were made, and that scientific 
papers and books were published?

Apparently a prominent scientist of the day, one Dr. Hahn, said that
he had found fossils in specified meteorites -- corals, sponges,
shells and crinoids -- all of them microscopic.  There are detailed
descriptions and photographs, with the features of the objects in the
photos clearly marked, in a book Hahn published which is or was in
the collection of the New York Public Library, as well as an article
published in Popular Science (20-83, which I take to mean volume 20
page 83 serially bound).

Another commentator in the same issue of Popular Science, one
Francis Bingham, said of the micro-fossils (judging from the
photographs) that their "notable peculiarity" is their "extreme
smallness," e.g., the corals are about one-twentieth the size of
terrestrial corals.  "They represent a veritable pygmy animal
world," wrote Bingham.

A Professor Lawrence Smith, who had not examined the specimens,
dismissed them as crystals of "enstatite" and called Hahn "a half-
insane man whose imagination has run away with him."  But another
scientist, one Dr Weinland, later examined Hahn's specimens in
person and said that they appeared to be real fossils and not
crystals.  After Dr. Weinland's pronouncement there seems to have
been no more published on the subject.

Though all of this comes from a second-hand source, it is said that
the shell striations are plain to see and that one can even see
the hinges where bivalves are joined.

Has anyone else heard of this, read the Popular Science article
or Hahn's book?  

There would seem to be two main possibilities:

(1) The fossils are real but the stone is not truly or wholly
meteoritic.  This would seem to be precluded by the fact that the
fossils are so much smaller than any terrestrial varieties, at least
those known at the time.

(2) The fossils are misidentified mineral or other features.  But this
should be easily ascertainable from the photographs by any modern
expert, given that these are complex animal forms and not merely
putative tubular bacterial forms as with the Mars fossils.

I would very much like to see this matter looked into by modern
scientific experts.  It is not merely enough to assume that had there
been anything to this story it would have been established in the
history books.  There was apparently a very great bias at the time
against the notion of fossils from extraterrestrial sources which
made Hahn's findings intrinsically controversial; additionally, the
science of the period (with regard to this specialty) was somewhat
primitive.
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