[meteorite-list] 1882 Newspaper Article, Organic Life in Meteorites

From: MARK BOSTICK <thebigcollector_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:08:21 2004
Message-ID: <F42OIKaOSbsShdbRMy60000132e_at_hotmail.com>

Paper: New York Times
City: New York, NY
Date: Saturday, May 27, 1882
Page: 4

     Dr. Hahn, the German lawyer who a few years ago announced that he had
found organic remains in meteorites, has made a covert and won a valuable
supporter in Dr. D. F. Weinland, who, when the book came out, begam quietly
to study it and to make investigations of his own, of which the fruits are
now seen. From museums in Tublingen and Vienna Dr. Hahn had obtained more
than 666 chips of meteorites of the class known as choadrite, which had been
collected in this century and the last in various parts of Europe, Asia, and
America. Examination discovered in them a quantity of organic remains
chiefly belonging to the most ancient form of porous corallines, bearing a
strong resemblance to the genus known as Favosites, though of a smaller
type. Dr. Hahn made out about 50 kinds of these tiny animals, assigned them
to 16 families, and gave to them seperate names. Dr. Weinland begins his
published observations on the work by reminding the reader that it is only
the shell of the choadrite meteorite that is burned and glazed by friction
with our atmosphere, and that, therefore, the "heat does not extend so far
during the short transit of the meteor as to impair the kernel, which has an
appearance somewhat like coarse shell-lime(?), of a conglomeration of
petrified organic matter, baked in a lump." Though only few specimens can
be called well preserved, the substance, he says, is "sufficiently
distinguishable to enable him to class most of the structures among the
Polyolstines and the Forminifera." They must have existed, he adds, in
water warm enough never to freeze down to the bottom of the stream or large
body of water which contained them.



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Received on Wed 04 Sep 2002 04:53:49 PM PDT