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Space rocks go on sale at New York auction

As a way of meeting your maker, this one at least had the benefit of originality. On Oct. 15 1972, a farmer in Trujillo, Venezuela, heard a sonic boom in the sky. The next day he discovered a cow lying dead in the field, its neck and shoulder pulverized. The bemused farmer found a boulder lying nearby, which he took away to use as a doorstep.

It was only many years later that a group of scientists, hearing what had happened, descended on Trujillo and confirmed that the boulder was in fact natural material from outer space that had hurtled through the Earth's atmosphere and crashed to the ground.

In the process, it bequeathed to the hapless cow a form of posthumous distinction as the only living thing that has been documented to have been killed by a meteorite.

A fragment of the killer rock will go on sale in New York tomorrow as part of the first auction devoted to meteorites.

The international auction house Bonhams is offering 53 lots, including some of the rarest and most celebrated meteorites in the world, which are expected to go under the gavel for several million dollars.

The items come from the US, Europe, Africa and China. Among them are exotic memorabilia, such as a mailbox from Claxton, Georgia, that looks no different from the sort you see at the end of suburban driveways across the US except that one end of it has been crumpled like a crushed Coke can.

It was here on Dec. 10, 1984, that a truly express delivery tore off the front flap. Being canny auctioneers, Bonhams is offering a slice of the Claxton meteorite (US$800), the mailbox proper (up to US$80,000), and the flap itself (US$7,500) as separate lots.

The sale amounts to a coming of age of meteorites as collectable objects. Part of the attraction of these nobbly bits of rock is their rarity.

At the high end, fragments of what are known as iron meteorites -- composed of iron and nickel and making up about 7 percent of all such objects -- have attracted a growing number of rich and famous collectors, including film director Steven Spielberg.
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