Murchison meteorite

A shower of stones fell to the west of Murchison, northern Victoria, in an area of about 14 sq. km between 10.45 and 11.00am on September 28, 1969. The largest fragment weighed about 7kg and altogether about 100kg was recovered. This is a carbonaceous chondrite. The specimen here is one of the smaller specimens recovered. This meteorite is extremely important because it contains amino acids and other carbon compounds. However, the amino acids do not appear to be of biological origin, although a proportion of them are of types normally found in living cells. This, coupled with the 4,500 million year age of the meteorite shows that these amino acids were available early in the evolution of the solar system and may have contributed to the origin of life.