LL3.10, metal-poor
Purchased October 2002
no coordinates recorded
A single stone weighing 487 g was found in the Sahara Desert and sold to A. and G. Hupé in Safsaf, Morocco in October 2002. This meteorite is very weakly shocked to stage S2 and heavily weathered to grade W3. Through analyses conducted at Northern Arizona University (T. Bunch and J. Wittke) and the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia (J. Grossman), it was determined that NWA 3127 is a polymict chondrite consisting of an LL3.1 host with LL4 and LL5 xenoliths.
Studies of the compositional, textural, and other petrographic features of chondrules in NWA 3127 revealed that it had close similarities to those of the LL3.0 Semarkona and the LL3.1 NWA 1756 chondrites. As a sensitive indicator of petrologic subtype (Grossman, 2004; Grossman and Bearley, 2005), the olivine chromite contents of NWA 3127 were measured and found to have values (ave. 0.38 wt%) consistent with an LL3.10 classification. After further analyses conducted by Grossman and Brearley (2007), a reclassification was made for NWA 3127 providing a refined subtype of LL3.10. Northwest Africa 3127 has a very low metal abundance, which was found to be a primary feature rather than an effect of terrestrial weathering.
Following its publication in MetBull 89 as an LL3.1 chondrite, a survey of O-isotopic compositions of numerous NWA-series chondrites was conducted which included NWA 3127 (D. Rumble, III et al., 2007, LPSC #2230). It was demonstrated that NWA 3127 and several other metal-poor chondrites plot far away from the trend lines for the H, L, and LL ordinary chondrite groups and probably represent several previously unrecognized parent asteroids. The specimen of NWA 3127 shown above is a 1.1 g partial slice.
