Sometime in the very distant past, an asteroid hit Mars with such force that rocks from the surface of the planet were launched into space.
After drifting through the solar system, possibly for millions of years, some of these unlikely meteoroids intersected the Earth’s orbit. A smaller number of them didn’t entirely burn up in the atmosphere, and an even smaller number hit land in a part of the world where geography and local interest conspired for them to be found, which in the vast majority of cases means North Africa.
The largest Martian meteorite ever found turned up in Niger in 2023 — a 54-pound rock, now known as NWA 16788. Earlier this month, Sotheby’s in New York auctioned it to an undisclosed buyer for $5.3 million.
Previously, the claim to the largest piece of Mars on Earth had belonged to the Maine Mineral and Gem Museum in Bethel, whose extensive meteorite collection includes the 32-pound meteorite Taoudenni 002.
And before NWA 16788 was even named, the Maine museum almost got that one, too.
Darryl Pitt, a meteorite dealer and consultant working on behalf of the museum and its co-founder and benefactor Lawrence Stifler, said he bought NWA 16788 in October 2023 for a little less than $500,000.
“The next day I was informed by the dealer (with whom I’ve worked with in the past) that the rock would be imminently shipped to me from Mauritania — and he was on his way to Mauritania to effectuate the same,” Pitt said recently in an email from Perth, Australia, where he was attending the annual meeting of the Meteoritical Society.
No money had changed yet, and when correspondence with the dealer became “distressingly foggy,” Pitt said he asked for assurances and was soon pressured to send the money to a dealer he was now unsure even had the meteorite. He was later told about a new partner whose commission upped the price by a third.
“I then made a rookie mistake,” said Pitt, who has been trading meteorites for decades. “I allowed my anger to cloud my perspective and I balked at paying the extra money now being demanded. I was later informed his partner bought out his interest and that the partner sold the rock to a Chinese buyer. Voila.”
Pitt may be the reason NWA 16788 was at a Sotheby’s auction to begin with. A photographer who worked for Rolling Stone and a slew of major touring musicians including Diana Ross, Crosby Stills and Nash, and Neil Diamond, his interest in meteorites started with childhood visit to Meteor Crater in Arizona.
In the 1980s, the experimental harpist and New Age music pioneer Andreas Vollenweider hired Pitt to be his manager, launching the photographer into a new career in artist management that continues today.
The money was good, he said, but during one high-pressure project with a famous duo whose relationship had famously fallen apart — he asked that they not be named — the stress was so great that Pitt started buying meteorites to get away from the emotional turmoil, eventually traveling the world looking for those rare rocks that had not only come from outer space but were visually appealing, too.
In 1995, he entered several of his choice finds into the first natural history auction in New York City, using his photography skills to emphasize the morphological aesthetics of the meteorites, which had until then been traded almost exclusively at rock shows and gatherings of amateur astronomers.
“I was just always struck by beautiful, interesting shapes, and I realized I could buy the ugliest meteorite that existed — iron meteorite, specifically — for the exact same amount as the most sublime sculptural object I’ve ever seen,” Pitt said. “And they all cost the same per unit weight. I thought, this is just wrong.”
Collectors agreed, and the high prices fetched at the first auctions motivated a new generation of meteorite hunters, which Pitt said has been a boon to science.
The majority of Martian meteorites have been found in the deserts of North Africa, usually by Berbers, Bedouins and other nomads who had been crisscrossing the desert but now had an incentive to keep their eyes on the ground. These rocks make their way into the hands of collectors and museums through a network of dealers and middlemen, most of whom take pains to stay out of the public eye, Pitt said.
“Whenever you see an article about a North African meteorite hunter or dealer — they are never the serious players … not even marginal,” he said.
Martian meteorites number fewer than 400 and can be identified by comparing the oxygen isotopes in air bubbles in the rock to the chemistry of air sampled by Mars rovers that have visited the Red Planet.
Pitt acquired Taoudenni 002 for the Maine Mineral and Gem Museum before it opened its doors in the summer of 2021 through a meteorite and desert truffle hunter he described as “a true friend and a remarkably lovely man” who would never speak to a reporter. When the museum opened later that year, it boasted the largest pieces of Mars, the Moon and the asteroid Vesta.
After learning of NWA 16788, the museum changed its displays to indicate Taoudenni 002 is now the second largest piece of Mars on Earth, according to Patrick Leverone, meteorite project director for the museum, though the website still says it is “home to the largest known pieces of the Moon and Mars.” Likewise, the “Martian meteorite” page on Wikipedia continues to list Taoudenni 002 as the largest.
The little museum in Bethel still holds the largest collection of Martian meteorites in the world and more pieces of the moon than NASA and all the natural history museums in the world, combined, Pitt said.
Having the largest Martian meteorite helped when the museum opened, but Pitt said it’s not the most important thing. Nor is it a permanent demotion. There are rumors of a still larger Martian meteorite, and he is now awaiting images.
And as he learned early on, size isn’t the only valuable attribute. NWA 16788 may be the largest piece of Mars on Earth, but it’s also a Shergottite, the most common type of Martian meteorite.
The museum is about to acquire a much smaller but unique Martian rock that Pitt said will help “rewrite The Book” on Mars. He was limited in what he could say ahead of an upcoming story in a major scientific journal.
“It weighs just a bit more than a pound,” he said, “but as we all know, good things can come in small packages — even from Mars.”
