How do i tell if something is a meteorite?

[Man]

Anyone ever found and succesfully ID'd a peice of meteorite?
My 3 year old found this today, mainly becouse it was waaaaaay out of place in our surroundings. I told him it was a rock and he tossed it, but i went back and picked it up (again becouse it was so outta place) and quickly noticed it was super dense. Not like lead weight but like a tungsten fishing weight. I have a place in east tx and am super familair with iron nodules. This just doesnt seem the same. Any good advise to get an ID?

Some things i just want to quickly get outta the way ahead of time:
Joe dirt's meteorite.
Leaverite (leave er right there)
Indian sex stone
Fossilized ****

[Snapperhead94]

Check with magnet.

[Chew]

You cut off all of my sarcastic replies. I hunted in Del Rio with Saltwaterslick and it seems like there was a meteorite strike site on their 11000 acre pasture. Lots of iron in the rocks at the site.

[Gerald G]

I found lots of it around Sabinal, was told it is meteorite, but don’t know for sure.

[Bassdeer]

Check with magnet.

This^^^ but most are not round.

[GarGuy]

Meteorites are rare. People find and show me rocks all the time and they are never meteorites. I think this one very well may be. Get good focused pics . All angles. If possible, grind a little spot on the edge with a dremel tool and take a good pic of the spot. I'll get you an answer. Worth several hundred bucks if it is.

Oh and find out how magnetic it is.

[stickerpatch59]

as stated above; magnetic.
also probably heavy for their size.

i've got one that weigh in at about 24 oz., found it in N.M. and it's not round either, but you can tell it's been very hot.

[Man]

Meteorites are rare. People find and show me rocks all the time and they are never meteorites. I think this one very well may be. Get good focused pics . All angles. If possible, grind a little spot on the edge with a dremel tool and take a good pic of the spot. I'll get you an answer. Worth several hundred bucks if it is.

Oh and find out how magnetic it is.

Will do. Give me a couple days. And thank you very much.

[dosrobles]

Looks like iron pyrite. Used to find it semi frequently around Austin. We called it doodoo rock for obvious reasons.
Not sure if that’s what you have.

[PYBUCK]

Probably Iron ore.

[Atfulldraw]

That's an Indian se.......

Let me get my resident geologist to take a look.

She picks up rocks everywhere we go, so I'm pretty sure one day someone is going to be wandering around our ranch and wonder how those rocks from Alaska and Colorado and Utah ended up way out in the middle of nowhere in Llano Texas.

[Man]

Welp there is no magnetic properties to it. Not even to a neodymium magnet. Now my interest is peaked in a different direction. Only a handful of dense metals that have no magnetic properties. Guess next step to to take the dremel to it.

[SaltwaterSlick]

Like Chew said, on that ranch we had in Del Rio, you could pick up 5 gallon buckets full of that stuff all sizes/shapes. I have one somewhere that is perfectly round except for a flat spot where it hit the ground still soft. Lots of them have a little deformity from where they were flying through the air an were not spinning so a dimple of sorts formed on the trailing side... Friend of mine is a rock doctor and he did his master's thesis on meteor impact craters and the debris created from them. He said he was not aware of a meteor impact that was documented in Del Rio, but there definitely was one somewhere in the area because those roundish rocks were once molten debris flying through the air from materials thrown into the air by the impact of the meteor hitting the earth's surface... pretty cool to see them. Took him out there with me once on a hunt... He never even got his gun out. He spent the whole time playin with them dang rocks! Was fascinating to see how much information he could gather from them and how they were lying on the ground!

[7sdad]

My deer leave things like that laying around all the time.

[GarGuy]

Nonmagnetic. Probably not a meteorite. Interesting. May be mostly Nicole but the surface color made me think iron.