Definition
Shergotty is a 5 kg Martian meteorite discovered in 1865 in Shergotty (now Sherghati), India. It also names a subgroup of the SNC meteorites, the shergottites, representing 78 % of the Martian meteorites. Its age has been dated to ca. 165 Ma by most isotopic systems, but according to the Pb-Pb dating, it can be as old as 4.3 Ga. Although shergottite source craters have been identified on young terrains in Tharsis and Elysium provinces, the Mojave crater, formed on a 4.3 Ga old terrain, has been recently found to match the mineralogy of Shergotty. Petrologically, Shergotty is a basaltic sample (containing pyroxene and plagioclase but no olivine or chromite), enriched in trace elements.
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© 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Plesa, AC. (2014). Shergotty. In: Amils, R., et al. Encyclopedia of Astrobiology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27833-4_5217-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27833-4_5217-1
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Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-27833-4
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