Surprisingly, there are a lot of Earth based rocks that look very similar to space rocks. Meteoriticists at the Field Museum regularly receive specimens from people around the world claiming to have found a meteorite. It’s up to these scientists to determine whether the specimens are meteorites, or just a chunk of asphalt (or something else). 
Take a look at some meteorites and some meteor-wrongs (which is actually the term used in the meteoritics community to describe these imposter meteorites). 


This meteorite is one of the most well known. It caused a blinding explosion that took place over the Russian district of Chelyabinsk in 2013. The fireball burned brighter than the sun. It was caused by the explosion of an enormous meteor as it entered Earth’s atmosphere at an extremely high speed. The meteor was estimated to weigh about 11,000 metric tons (or about 24,250,000 pounds, nearly as heavy as the Eiffel Tower) before it exploded. The shockwave caused injuries to more than 1,500 people - a very rare occurrence of a meteorite fall directly impacting people’s lives. The Chelyabinsk meteor was probably a once-in-100-years event, but it made us realize how vulnerable humans really are to meteorite impacts. 

This rock, collected by Washington University in St. Louis is a meteorwrong! Although it looks like it could be a meteorite, through research and testing, it was found to be a terrestrial rock.

This is a fossil meteorite. Fossil meteorites are so rare that only 101 have been discovered to date. The fossilization process for meteorites happens in the same way that organisms - plants and animals - become fossilized. The meteorite’s original materials are gradually replaced over a long period of time by minerals in the ground surrounding it. All of the fossil meteorites that have been discovered so far come from the same spot: deep in a limestone quarry in Sweden that used to be an ancient sea. Based on the age of the rock around them, we know that the now-fossilized meteorites fell to Earth about 466 million years ago. They are debris from a major collision event that happened in the asteroid belt when they broke off of what is called the parent body. These meteorites were some of the first pieces to arrive on Earth after the collision.   

This is a rare green meteorite. These are ungrouped meteorites that came from asteroids we didn’t even know existed until a few years ago. “Ungrouped” means that these meteorites don’t fit the classification of any previously documented meteorites. In other words, they’re from small planets that scientists haven’t sampled before. That’s what makes an ungrouped meteorite an exciting find. It’s a window into a part of our solar system that remains to be explored. The hope is that one day, we’ll have enough samples of this new type that we’ll be able to identify a new group of meteorites. 

Just as meteorites fall to Earth, they also land on other planets. Thanks to 3D photographs taken by NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover 

, we’re able to get a close up, detailed look at an iron meteorite spotted on Mars. A life-size replica of this Mars meteorite was created using imagery and data gathered by the 

. Found in 2009, the real meteorite is still on Mars. 

Check out the Brain Scoop with former Chief Curiosity Correspondent Emily Graslie and the Collections Manager for Physical Geology and Meteorites, Jim Holstein. 

Standards for Meteorite Identification Part Two