Meier Matthias M. M.

No Thumbnail Available
Last Name
Meier
First Name
Matthias M. M.
ORCID

Filters

2011 - 2019 3
2 1
3
Reset filters

Settings

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Article
    A fossil winonaite-like meteorite in Ordovician limestone : a piece of the impactor that broke up the L-chondrite parent body?
    (Elsevier, 2014-06-06) Schmitz, Birger ; Huss, Gary R. ; Meier, Matthias M. M. ; Peucker-Ehrenbrink, Bernhard ; Church, Ross P. ; Cronholm, Anders ; Davies, Melvyn B. ; Heck, Philipp R. ; Johansen, Anders ; Keil, Klaus ; Kristiansson, Per ; Ravizza, Gregory E. ; Tassinari, Mario ; Terfelt, Fredrik
    About a quarter of all meteorites falling on Earth today originate from the breakup of the L-chondrite parent body ∼470 Ma∼470 Ma ago, the largest documented breakup in the asteroid belt in the past ∼3 Ga∼3 Ga. A window into the flux of meteorites to Earth shortly after this event comes from the recovery of about 100 fossil L chondrites (1–21 cm in diameter) in a quarry of mid-Ordovician limestone in southern Sweden. Here we report on the first non-L-chondritic meteorite from the quarry, an 8 cm large winonaite-related meteorite of a type not known among present-day meteorite falls and finds. The noble gas data for relict spinels recovered from the meteorite show that it may be a remnant of the body that hit and broke up the L-chondrite parent body, creating one of the major asteroid families in the asteroid belt. After two decades of systematic recovery of fossil meteorites and relict extraterrestrial spinel grains from marine limestone, it appears that the meteorite flux to Earth in the mid-Ordovician was very different from that of today.
  • Article
    An extraterrestrial trigger for the mid-ordovician ice age: Dust from the breakup of the L-chondrite parent body
    (American Association for the Advancement of Science:, 2019-09-18) Schmitz, Birger ; Farley, Kenneth A. ; Goderis, Steven ; Heck, Philipp R. ; Bergstrom, Stig M. ; Boschi, Samuele ; Claeys, Philippe ; Debaille, Vinciane ; Dronov, Andrei ; van Ginneke, Matthias ; Harper, David A. T. ; Iqbal, Faisal ; Friberg, Johan ; Liao, Shiyong ; Martin, Ellinor ; Meier, Matthias M. M. ; Peucker-Ehrenbrink, Bernhard ; Soens, Bastien ; Wieler, Rainer ; Terfelt, Fredrik
    The breakup of the L-chondrite parent body in the asteroid belt 466 million years (Ma) ago still delivers almost a third of all meteorites falling on Earth. Our new extraterrestrial chromite and 3He data for Ordovician sediments show that the breakup took place just at the onset of a major, eustatic sea level fall previously attributed to an Ordovician ice age. Shortly after the breakup, the flux to Earth of the most fine-grained, extraterrestrial material increased by three to four orders of magnitude. In the present stratosphere, extraterrestrial dust represents 1% of all the dust and has no climatic significance. Extraordinary amounts of dust in the entire inner solar system during >2 Ma following the L-chondrite breakup cooled Earth and triggered Ordovician icehouse conditions, sea level fall, and major faunal turnovers related to the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event.
  • Preprint
    Determining the impactor of the Ordovician Lockne crater : oxygen and neon isotopes in chromite versus sedimentary PGE signatures
    ( 2011-04-15) Schmitz, Birger ; Heck, Philipp R. ; Alwmark, Carl ; Kita, Noriko T. ; Meier, Matthias M. M. ; Peucker-Ehrenbrink, Bernhard ; Ushikubo, Takayuki ; Valley, John W.
    Abundant chromite grains with L-chondritic composition in the resurge deposits of the Lockne impact crater (458 Myr old; dia. ~10 km) in Sweden have been inferred to represent relict fragments of an impactor from the break-up of the L-chondrite parent body at 470 Ma. This view has been challenged based on Ir/Cr and platinum group element (PGE) patterns of the same resurge deposits, and a reinterpretation of the origin of the chromite grains. An impactor of the non-magmatic iron meteorite type was proposed instead. Here we show that single-grain oxygen and noble-gas isotope analyses of the chromite grains from the resurge deposits further support an origin from an L-chondritic asteroid. We also present PGE analyses and Ir/Cr ratios for fossil L-chondritic meteorites found in mid-Ordovician marine limestone in Sweden. The L-chondritic origin has been confirmed by several independent methods, including major element and oxygen isotopic analyses of chromite. Although the meteorites show the same order-of-magnitude PGE and Cr concentrations as recent L chondrites, the elements have been redistributed to the extent that it is problematic to establish the original meteorite type from these proxies. Different PGE data processing approaches can lead to highly variable results, as also shown here for the Lockne resurge deposits. We conclude that the Lockne crater was formed by an L-chondritic impactor, and that considerable care must be taken when inferring projectile type from PGEs in sedimentary ejecta deposits.