Italian academic article, external<\/a> published last year said that it was found on 16 November 2023 in the Sahara Desert in Niger’s Agadez region, 90km (56 miles) to the west of the Chirfa Oasis, by “a meteorite hunter, whose identity remained undisclosed”.<\/p>\nMeteorites can fall anywhere on Earth, but because of the favourable climate for preservation and the lack of human disturbance, the Sahara has become a prime spot for their discovery. People scour the inhospitable landscape stretching across several countries in the hope of finding one to sell on.<\/p>\n
According to the Italian article, NWA 16788, was “sold by the local community to an international dealer” and was then transferred to a private gallery in the Italian city of Arezzo. <\/p>\n
The University of Florence’s magazine described the person as “an important Italian gallery owner”. <\/p>\n
A team of scientists led by Giovanni Pratesi, mineralogy professor at the university, was able to examine it to learn more about its structure and where it came from. The meteorite was then briefly on display last year in Italy, including at the Italian Space Agency in Rome.<\/p>\n
It was next seen in public in New York last month, minus two slices that stayed in Italy for more research.<\/p>\n
Sotheby’s said that NWA 16788 was “exported from Niger and transported in line with all relevant international procedures.<\/p>\n
“As with everything we sell, all relevant documentation was in order at each stage of its journey, in accordance with best practice and the requirements of the countries involved.”<\/p>\n
A spokesperson added that Sotheby’s was aware of reports that Niger is investigating the export of the meteorite and “we are reviewing the information available to us in light of the question raised”.<\/p>\n
Prof Sereno, who founded the organisation Niger Heritage a decade ago, is convinced Nigerien law was broken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sotheby’s strongly disputes this, saying the correct procedures were followed, but Niger has now launched an investigation into…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":133544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[159,783,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-133543","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-space","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115002743410082343","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}