Ore Petrography, Mineralogical and Chemical Composition of New Iron Meteorite (Al-Sherqat Meteorite) from Iraq

The meteorite with a single total mass of 630 gm as a visible meteorite has fallen on 22 March 2021, at 10:00 a.m. in Al-Sherqat subdistrict within Salah Al-Din, northern Iraq; and therefore, was named Al-Sherqat meteorite by the authors. It is characterized by a uniform structure of coherent and medium degree of malleability. It is of a well-crystalline structure and not homogeneous in composition. The Al-Sherqat meteorite is composed of metallic phases of 7.6 gm/cm3 density exhibiting an oriented intergrowth of kamacite (α-FeNi) with taenite showing a Widmanstätten pattern on an etched polished section with the finest octahedrite kamacite bandwidth of less than 0.2 mm. It is composed of Fe (86.9 wt%), Ni (9.63 wt%), P (1.31 wt%), S (0.628 wt%), Ti (0.623 wt%), Co (0.446 wt%), Mo (0.146 wt%), Cr (0.103 wt%), Cu (0.141 wt%), V (300 ppm), Nb (220 ppm), W (53 ppm), Ag (50 ppm), Pb (30 ppm), Zn (20 ppm), Sb (16 ppm), Sn (10 ppm) and As (3 ppm). Al-Sherqat meteorite was structurally classified as an iron meteorite belongs to the plessitic group (Opl)) with octahedrite finest bands (less than 0.2 mm) of the kamacite lamellae. Kamacite platelets in Al-Sherqat meteorite are almost not a continuous plate network. Chemically, it belongs to the IIC type of magmatic group based on the amount of nickel (9.63%), where IIC is typically octahedrites has 9.3 – 11.5% Ni. The presence of kamacite, taenite, schreibersite, daubréelites, pentlandite, chromite, and wusite in Al-Sherqat meteorite are in accordance with IIC group of the iron meteorites. Al-Sherqat meteorite belongs to M-type considering a metallic core fragmented by impact asteroid. The most probable source of this meteorite is the core of an asteroid that melted early in its history.