¹Marcela E. Saavedra,²Julia Roszjar,³My E. I. Riebe,¹María E. Varela,⁴Shuying Yang,⁴Munir Humayun,⁵Ryoji Tanaka,³H. Busemann
Meteoritics & Planetary Science (in Press) Link to Article [https://doi.org/10.1111/maps.13913]
¹ICATE-CONICET, Av. España 1512 Sur, San Juan, J5402DSP Argentina
²Department of Mineralogy and Petrography, Natural History Museum Vienna, Burgring 7, 1010 Vienna, Austria
³Department of Earth Sciences, Institute of Geochemistry and Petrology, ETH Zürich, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland
⁴National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, 32310 USA
⁵Institute for Planetary Materials, Okayama University, 827 Yamada, Misasa, Tottori, 682-0193 Japan
Published by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons

On the night of June 22, 1931 at 4 h 30 min, a fireball was seen in the vicinity of Malotas, Argentina. During the atmospheric trajectory (southwest to northeast), it experienced several fragmentation events. After the fall, a piece was given to Professor Juan A. Olsacher (National University of Córdoba City, Argentina), who collected some further pieces. One of those samples was officially classified as an H5 ordinary chondrite termed Malotas. The present work focuses on the study of another two pieces rediscovered recently in the Museo de Mineralogía y Geología Dr. Alfred Stelzner in Cordoba City, Argentina. The first piece turned out to be an achondritic meteorite termed Malotas (b). Petrographic features, chemical composition, and oxygen isotopes point to a monomict basaltic eucrite belonging to the Stannern-trend chemical subgroup of eucrites. The occurrence of anorthitic plagioclase veins in clinopyroxene, veinlet apatite, irregular-shaped pockets of silica and troilite and porous silica signal metasomatism and thermal annealing before a late thermal event took place after brecciation. The latter was possibly recorded in the nominal U/Th-4He ages of 1.2–3.4 Ga detected in this work, whereas nominal K-Ar gas retention ages are within the range 3.5–4.2 Ga and may have escaped late thermal modifications. The second piece is classified as an L5 chondrite. The different cosmic ray exposure ages of 3, ~50, and 27 Ma determined for the H5 and L5 chondrites and the eucrite samples, respectively, might signal a common fall as a result of the breakup of a polymict meteoroid.