LIBYAN DESERT GLASS - WHEN AN ASTEROID AND THE EARTH COLLIDE. ...

Description

LIBYAN DESERT GLASS - WHEN AN ASTEROID AND THE EARTH COLLIDE
The Sahara Desert at the Libyan/ Egyptian border
The present offering is among the finest large-sized Libyan Desert Glass specimens known to exist. Worthy of the finest natural history museums, it's extremely rare for large specimens to be as translucent, and with as much color and as few blemishes as the example now offered. Libyan Desert Glass has been revered by early Egyptian civilization and found in Egyptian tombs. Its origin was long considered a mystery, but scientists now agree it is the result of an asteroid slamming into Earth 28.5 million years ago. Meteorite components have been found to be embedded in Libyan Desert Glass. The extraordinary heat and pressure that resulted from this impact liquefied terrestrial rocks and sand, which was splashed into the upper atmosphere before returning to Earth as solidified glass.

The specimen offered here is slightly chartreuse. It was found in an extremely remote and inhospitable area of the Sahara Desert referred to as the Great Sand Sea in Egypt -an area so remote that when a scientific team went to explore the locality, a previously missing Egyptian plane was discovered, intact, with the remains of its passengers who had died of thirst. There are what appear to be organic inclusions in the glass, but they're not. The muted yet lustrous surface appears to have been sandblasted-and that is precisely what occurred over millions of years of natural sandblasting by desert winds. Accented further by elongated ribbing and a hint of scalloping, this natural glass sculpture is a matchless example - and the result of a massive asteroid impact that would today result in a calamity of apocalyptic proportions. 154 x 151 x 109 mm (6 x 6 x 4.25 inches) and 1998 grams (4.4 pounds).

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