[meteorite-list] No Dogs Allowed - or are they?

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue Nov 2 13:06:33 2004
Message-ID: <200411021806.KAA10368_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

Mark Bostick wrote:
> Hello Kevin and list,
>
> Kevin, I guess since you are kind of taking a poll in that statement...and
> with light of the election day... I will go on the record as stating, "It is
> very possible the dog was killed by the fall of the Nakhla meteorite."
>

My sentiments exactly, Mark.

The Nakhla dog story has not been disproven, and there is no reason to censor it.
Here's the text that the Kevin and I agreed to about Nakhla on my Mars meteorite
home page:

  A rain of 40 stones fell from the sky in 1911 near Nakhla in Egypt. The falls were
  preceded by an appearance of a cloud and detonations, frightening local residents.
  There is an eyewitness account that one of the fragments hit a dog.
  Efforts to substantiate the validity of the dog story almost a century later
  have been unsuccessful thus far, though the story hasn't been disproven either.

There is no doubt that the Nakhla meteorite fell. We have the meteorite fragments.
There were eyewitnesses of the meteorite fall in both Nakhla and Denshal.
There is no doubt the farmer who witnessed the dog hit really did see the Nakhla fall.
The main problem was that was no apparent effort made to sustantiate the farmer's
eyewitness account back in 1911. There were no followup interviews or discussions
with the farmer back then for clarification, or any attempts to look for a dog.
Now, trying to track down the story over 90 years later has
been very difficult. How do you prove or disprove a report, when all
of the witnesses are dead, and most of the physical evidence is lost or gone? That
has been the dilemma. The Nakhla meteorite may have hit a dog, or it may not
have. There is some hope though. The original account was reported in
an Arabic newspaper, and then mentioned in an English newspaper.
If the original Arabic newspaper is found, then additional details may be
uncovered. The farmer even provided a rock matching Nahka's description
to the newspaper he reported his story to, and that fragment is not
accounted for today. The farmer did provide very accurate descriptions of the Nakhla
meteorite and fall characteristics, and the Nakhla flight path does indeed line up
with his location in Denshal. All of this accurate
information give more credence to his witnessing the meteorite hitting the dog.
There is no motive for him to fabricate the story.

So, we're in this limbo state, where the story haven't been proven or disproven.
While some people want to dismiss the story as a fanciful tale, I've
adopted a more open-minded view. There is some credence to the story, and
I'm more than willing to consider any new evidence supporting or refuting the
story either way.

Incidently, the farmer's report was the first report made of the Nakhla meteorite.
Had the farmer not reported the dog story and his eyewitness account of the Nakhla
meteorite fall, then the Nakhla meteorite would have probably not been lost
to science forever.

That alone is worth to keeping the dead dog alive.

Ron Baalke
Received on Tue 02 Nov 2004 01:06:31 PM PST