Remember the asteroid that probably wiped out the dinosaurs? That was an extreme case of a meteorite impact. Today, far smaller pieces of rock from space land all over the planet, and others collected ages ago, sit quietly in museum drawers and private collections. Across Cuba, a small group of dense, dark rocks carry an attractive label: meteorite. For decades they have been treated as fragments of asteroids that landed on the island, even though most were never examined with modern analytic tools. When we finally put them under the microscope, several of these supposed "space rocks" turned out to be something else entirely.
Before getting to those cool results, it is worth asking: what is a meteorite, and why does it matter? Most meteorites are pieces of asteroids, small bodies that never grew into full planets. A few rare ones come from the Moon or Mars. They are leftovers from the early solar system, frozen records of how dust, rock, metal, and ice first came together 4.5 billion years ago and gave rise to bodies like our own planet. By studying their minerals and chemistry, we learn how planets formed, how they differentiated into cores and mantles, how water and organic molecules moved around, and how often large objects have hit Earth in the past. In other words, meteorites are not just “space souvenirs”, they are physical pages from the early history of our planetary system, with direct relevance to questions about Earth's origins, impact hazards, and even the conditions that probably made life possible.
With that in mind, it becomes clearer why it matters to know which rocks really came from space and which did not. If a specimen is misidentified, it can mislead the statistics, comparisons, and models that scientists build from it. If it is correctly recognized, even a small fragment can become part of a much bigger scientific story.
This blog post is about what happened when we went back to test some of those “meteorites” samples, in detail. I will walk through two kinds of stories from our recent work: how several classic Cuban meteorites turned out to be meteor-wrongs, and how a very weathered meteorite from Jamaica, Lucky Hill, could still confirm its extraterrestrial origin under the microscope. Together, they show how old specimens in museums can still change what we think we know. Museum collections are today more alive than ever!
One of the first objects we revisited was a famous iron lump in the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid, long listed in catalogs as the official “Cuba” meteorite. On paper it sounded convincing: heavy, metallic, and backed by an old story linking it to the island. Under the microscope, however, it behaved like something entirely different. It lacked the nickel-rich alloys and internal patterns we expect from iron meteorites that cooled slowly inside an asteroid. Its chemistry also matched man-made metal far better than any known natural iron from space. In other words, the “Cuba meteorite” is almost certainly not a meteorite at all, but a “meteor-wrong” (a term used for rocks that resemble them) that sat in the meteorite record for more than a century before being really tested.
That result pushed us to look more systematically at the broader set of suspected meteorites from Cuba. The island's geology is remarkably varied, with ultramafic rocks, basalts, laterites, iron crusts, and industrial ferrosilicon slags all occur in a country with a long mining and metallurgical history. It is the perfect recipe for confusion. Dense, dark, magnetic rocks turn up in fields, quarries, riverbeds, construction sites, and even archaeological digs. Some end up in museum drawers. Many others are passed from hand to hand with a confident “meteorite” label.
When we compiled and examined a series of these celebrated specimens, most turned out to be very down to earth. Some were ordinary basalts. Others were iron-rich concretions formed in soils. Several were industrial slags from smelting or foundry work, full of bubbles and strange textures that make them look extraterrestrial at first glance. Their magnetism and odd shapes make them ideal candidates to fool both the public and older scientific catalogs. Yet simple tests, such as checking density, looking for the minerals that really belong in meteorites, and using standard tools like X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), were enough to show that many of these supposed specimens never fell from space at all.
This is one of the quiet surprises of working with old collections. A specimen collected in the nineteenth century, mislabeled and slowly dusting in a drawer, can still become new data once you point the right instruments at it. Museum shelves turn into laboratories, and long accepted stories about certain objects can change in a matter of hours once the measurements are in. Our work on the Cuban meteor-wrongs and on the old catalogs is a reminder that museums are not static storage rooms. Instead, they are active archives of planetary material, where forgotten samples can still change what we think we know.
Not everything we studied ended up being a meteor-wrong, though. The Caribbean does have genuine meteorites, and one of the most intriguing is Lucky Hill, found in Jamaica in 1885. By the time we see it today, Lucky Hill barely looks like a meteorite. The surviving pieces are small and heavily rusted, and in some collections, they are little more than reddish powder in small vials. For decades, that weathering made it hard to say much beyond “yes, it probably came from space.”
In our most recent work, we focused on one of the best-preserved Lucky Hill fragments, kept at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. Using a scanning electron microscope with an X-ray detector, essentially a very powerful magnifying glass that also tells you what each tiny grain is made of, we were able to pick out what remains of the original metal. Most of the iron has been converted into rust minerals, but small pockets of nickel-bearing alloy still survive, together with tiny crystals of schreibersite, a phosphorus rich iron nickel mineral that is typical of iron meteorites. At the same time, we see minerals such as akageneite that form when chloride rich moisture attacks iron, exactly what you would expect for an object exposed for a long time in a warm, probably coastal environment.
From Cuba to Jamaica, the same approach gives two very different answers. In Cuba, several well-known "meteorites" dissolve into a mixture of basalts, concretions, and industrial slag once you look closely enough. In Jamaica, a heavily rusted lump that barely looks meteoritic at first sight turns out, under the microscope, to preserve just enough of its original structure to confirm that it really is a fragment of an iron body from space. In both cases we move from rusted pebbles, a few centimeters across, to questions about how metal bodies formed and cooled in the early solar system. That jump, from micrometers under the electron beam to millions of kilometers across the asteroid belt, is part of the quiet awe behind this work.
All this also says a lot about museums and old collections. Many of the specimens we studied were collected in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when analytic tools were limited and labels were sometimes vague. Tropical climates, salty air, and decades in storage have taken their toll. Re-examining this material with modern methods is not just an academic exercise; it tells curators which objects need better conservation, which labels should be rewritten, and which specimens are truly reliable for future research. It also shows why careful labeling and proper storage matter. A rock that is recorded with its place and date of collection, and preserved under decent conditions, can still be reanalyzed a century later and yield new information. Without that chain of care, the scientific value is lost.
For anyone who has ever picked up a heavy, dark rock and wondered whether it came from space, the message is simple: curiosity is essential, but the evidence decides. Magnets and good stories are a starting point, not a final verdict. Some candidates will prove to be genuine messengers from the asteroid belt; many will be meteor-wrongs with interesting but entirely terrestrial histories. In both cases, careful observation and a bit of geo-chemistry are what turn guesses into knowledge, and what keep the process of scientific discovery very much alive and connected to the wider public that ultimately supports and benefits from it.
That result pushed us to look more systematically at the broader set of suspected meteorites from Cuba. The island's geology is remarkably varied, with ultramafic rocks, basalts, laterites, iron crusts, and industrial ferrosilicon slags all occur in a country with a long mining and metallurgical history. It is the perfect recipe for confusion. Dense, dark, magnetic rocks turn up in fields, quarries, riverbeds, construction sites, and even archaeological digs. Some end up in museum drawers. Many others are passed from hand to hand with a confident “meteorite” label.
When we compiled and examined a series of these celebrated specimens, most turned out to be very down to earth. Some were ordinary basalts. Others were iron-rich concretions formed in soils. Several were industrial slags from smelting or foundry work, full of bubbles and strange textures that make them look extraterrestrial at first glance. Their magnetism and odd shapes make them ideal candidates to fool both the public and older scientific catalogs. Yet simple tests, such as checking density, looking for the minerals that really belong in meteorites, and using standard tools like X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), were enough to show that many of these supposed specimens never fell from space at all.
This is one of the quiet surprises of working with old collections. A specimen collected in the nineteenth century, mislabeled and slowly dusting in a drawer, can still become new data once you point the right instruments at it. Museum shelves turn into laboratories, and long accepted stories about certain objects can change in a matter of hours once the measurements are in. Our work on the Cuban meteor-wrongs and on the old catalogs is a reminder that museums are not static storage rooms. Instead, they are active archives of planetary material, where forgotten samples can still change what we think we know.
Not everything we studied ended up being a meteor-wrong, though. The Caribbean does have genuine meteorites, and one of the most intriguing is Lucky Hill, found in Jamaica in 1885. By the time we see it today, Lucky Hill barely looks like a meteorite. The surviving pieces are small and heavily rusted, and in some collections, they are little more than reddish powder in small vials. For decades, that weathering made it hard to say much beyond “yes, it probably came from space.”
In our most recent work, we focused on one of the best-preserved Lucky Hill fragments, kept at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. Using a scanning electron microscope with an X-ray detector, essentially a very powerful magnifying glass that also tells you what each tiny grain is made of, we were able to pick out what remains of the original metal. Most of the iron has been converted into rust minerals, but small pockets of nickel-bearing alloy still survive, together with tiny crystals of schreibersite, a phosphorus rich iron nickel mineral that is typical of iron meteorites. At the same time, we see minerals such as akageneite that form when chloride rich moisture attacks iron, exactly what you would expect for an object exposed for a long time in a warm, probably coastal environment.
From Cuba to Jamaica, the same approach gives two very different answers. In Cuba, several well-known "meteorites" dissolve into a mixture of basalts, concretions, and industrial slag once you look closely enough. In Jamaica, a heavily rusted lump that barely looks meteoritic at first sight turns out, under the microscope, to preserve just enough of its original structure to confirm that it really is a fragment of an iron body from space. In both cases we move from rusted pebbles, a few centimeters across, to questions about how metal bodies formed and cooled in the early solar system. That jump, from micrometers under the electron beam to millions of kilometers across the asteroid belt, is part of the quiet awe behind this work.
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| Lucky Hill meteorite scattered fragments stored at the British Museum, London, UK. Courtesy and photograph of Natasha Vasiliki Almeida (BNHM). |
All this also says a lot about museums and old collections. Many of the specimens we studied were collected in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when analytic tools were limited and labels were sometimes vague. Tropical climates, salty air, and decades in storage have taken their toll. Re-examining this material with modern methods is not just an academic exercise; it tells curators which objects need better conservation, which labels should be rewritten, and which specimens are truly reliable for future research. It also shows why careful labeling and proper storage matter. A rock that is recorded with its place and date of collection, and preserved under decent conditions, can still be reanalyzed a century later and yield new information. Without that chain of care, the scientific value is lost.
For anyone who has ever picked up a heavy, dark rock and wondered whether it came from space, the message is simple: curiosity is essential, but the evidence decides. Magnets and good stories are a starting point, not a final verdict. Some candidates will prove to be genuine messengers from the asteroid belt; many will be meteor-wrongs with interesting but entirely terrestrial histories. In both cases, careful observation and a bit of geo-chemistry are what turn guesses into knowledge, and what keep the process of scientific discovery very much alive and connected to the wider public that ultimately supports and benefits from it.
Further reading
Ceballos-Izquierdo, Y., Orihuela, J., Gonçalves, G., et al. (2021). Meteorite and bright fireball records from Cuba. Mineralia Slovaca, 53(2), 131–145.
Ceballos-Izquierdo, Y., Nieto Codina, A., & Orihuela, J. (2024). From meteorite to meteor-wrong: Investigating a controversial specimen from Cuba. Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Geológicas, 41(1), 1–10.
From meteorite to meteor-wrong …
Ceballos-Izquierdo, Y., Orihuela, J., & Borges-Sellén, C. R. (2024). Checklist of Cuban meteor-wrongs. Revista de la Sociedad Geológica de España, 37(1), 32–44.
Ceballos-Izquierdo, Y., Gonçalves Silva, G., & Orihuela, J. (2025). Rediscovering Lucky Hill: SEM-EDS insights into the composition and weathering of a Jamaican meteorite. Geologia USP Série Científica, 25(4), 89–98. Here...
