Carbonaceous chondrite (Murchison Meteorite)
Carbonaceous chondrite - large individual of the Murchison Meteorite with fusion crust. FMNH Me 2640 (Field Museum of Natural History meteorite collection, Chicago, Illinois, USA).
Carbonaceous chondrites are dark gray to blackish-colored chondrite meteorites with a relatively carbon-rich matrix. The Murchison Meteorite is a famous carbonaceous chondrite. It landed on Earth in in the late morning on 28 September 1969 in Victoria, Australia. Samples were quickly recovered to minimize contamination with Earth materials. Murchison is important for containing extraterrestrial amino acids. Amino acids are the “building blocks” of life on Earth. This discovery demonstrated that these organic molecules may have originally appeared on Earth not by chemical synthesis in the early oceans (although that is still a strong possibility), but may have arrived from outer space.