Antarctic Meteorites

[knocker]

 

Antarctica, it has been discovered, is the best meteorite trap on Earth.  Firstly meteorites fall onto ice rather than hard rock and so are damaged less. Then, being rock, they stand out from their background unlike those falling in the temperate zones which will mainly be not distinguished from the local rock.  Then there is a curious concentration process by which ice flowing outwards and meeting a rock or mountain obstruction, shears upwards bringing the enclosed meteorites to the surface. In many regions where ice is trapped against a mountainside and with no easy path to flow away, the ice is slowly reduced in thickness by solar ablation and ablation by katabatic winds, eventually after hundreds of thousands of years leaving a surface littered with extra-terrestrial objects.

 

http://www.rosssea.info/meteorites.html