Viñales meteorite, Pinar del Río Province, Cubai

Regional Level Types
Viñales meteorite	Meteorite Fall Location
Pinar del Río Province	Province
Cuba	Country

Official name: Viñales
Synonym: Vinyales
Observed fall: yes
Fall: 2019, February 1, 1:17 pm local time (18:17:10 UTC)
Coordinates (Meteoritical Bulletin): 22°37.17’N, 83°44.57’W
Recovered weight: > 50 kg, masses of individual samples are in a range 2–1100 g
Ordinary chondrite, type L6; weathering grade W0; Shock stage S3 (specimen of the Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry, Moscow, Russia) or S4 (specimen of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA)
Type spec. mass: one individual sample of 148 g and one transparent-polished section are on deposit at Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry, Moscow, Russia
Classifier: C. Efrén Jaimez Salgado, IGA (Institute of Geophysics and Astronomy, Havana, Cuba); C. A. Lorenz, Vernad (Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry, Moscow, Russia); A. Rubin, UCLA (Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA); L. Garvie, ASUV (Center for Meteorite Studies, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA)


A bright bolide accompanied by loud sonic booms flew across the province of Pinar del Río, Cuba, at 1:17 pm local time (18:17:10 UTC) on 1 February 2019. A long smoke trail was also observed. The residents thought a plane had crashed, as they heard explosions and then ground rumbling lasting 15 to 20 s. A meteorite shower fell on Viñales Valley, a national monument since 1978 and a UNESCO world heritage site. The area is covered by a forest and fields. The first and some of the largest stones were collected near the monument "Mural of Prehistory" (Mural de la Prehistoria) by artist Leovigildo Gonzalez Morillo. Others were discovered in and around Viñales and throughout the Viñales Valley. Some of the meteorite individuals penetrated the ground, one of them broke through an asphalt road, and many were recovered from rooftops. Hundreds of individual samples (ranging from 2 to 1100 g in weight) were collected by the local residents. The stones are covered by black fusion crust with reddish smears of a laterite clay. The substance of the meteorite of light gray colour can be seen in small areas of the broken crust.

The interior of the stones is light-coloured; silicates are transected by dark, pseudotachylite-like shock veins. The rock is highly recrystallized; chondrules (ranging up to ~1 mm in diameter) have margins difficult to discern. The meteorite samples contain the several vol% of black inclusions of melt rock. Metal grains range in size up to about 700 µm. The rock exhibits moderate silicate darkening. Chromite grains are moderately to extensively fractured. Some troilite grains and some kamacite grains are polycrystalline. A few kamacite grains contain small rounded grains of troilite within them. Metallic Cu was not observed. There are several small chromite-plagioclase assemblages and some olivine grains contain small chromite veinlets. The shock veins range to more than 1 cm in length and are typically 20 µm to 150 µm wide. The veins contain major silicate and small blebs of metallic Fe-Ni, and to a lesser extent, troilite; these opaque blebs are typically 1-3 µm in diameter. Also present in the veins are cellular metal-troilite veinlets 10-30 µm in length. Elongated aggregates of chromite occur alongside portions of some shock veins. Slabs of Viñales show intersecting dark shock veins, anastomosing veins, and a few quasi-circular melt concentrations where veins intersect. Coarse metal grains are heterogeneously distributed in some samples – some regions of these samples have abundant coarse metal; other regions have none. Near the dark fusion crust, numerous thin veinlets of troilite surround and penetrate fractures within silicate grains.


Silicate minerals from the rock show homogeneous chemical composition. The fayalite (Fa) contents in olivine (forsterite) are between 24.4 and 25.1 and a mean value is 24.6. The chemical composition of pyroxene shows low-Ca pyroxene (Wo <2.0) composition, in which the Fs values are between 20.2 and 20.8 and a mean value is 20.5, and the En values are 77.7–78.3 and a mean value is 77.9, which corresponds to bronzite. The An, Ab, and Or values of feldspar are 1.9–7.7, 82.4–84.7, and 7.8–14.9, respectively, which indicates albite and anorthoclase. Olivine, low-Ca pyroxene, feldspar in the shock melt veins have the similar chemical compositions of these in chondritic portion except the feldspars, which show a little depletion of albite component (Ab_75.6-76.1). Other minerals characterised by UCLA and ASU include diopside, chromite, kamacite (6.6±0.6 wt.% Ni; 0.89±0.12 wt.% Co), troilite (containing 0.7-0.42 wt.% Ni), taenite, and accessory tetrataenite, merrillite, and chlorapatite.

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