<p>Yes, meteorites have been found in limestone.  See e.g. the following references:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X96002051" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Geochemistry of meteorite-rich marine limestone strata and fossil meteorites from the lower Ordovician at Kinnekulle, Sweden</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Thirteen fossil meteorites (⊘ = 1.5–9 cm) have been found in lower Ordovician Orthoceratite Limestone at Kinnekulle, Sweden. The meteorites were recovered from a 3.5 m thick quarried interval in the middle of a 30 m thick section of Orthoceratite Limestone.</p>
</blockquote>

<p><a href="http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/Mar04/fossilMeteorites.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Tiny Traces of a Big Asteroid Breakup</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Ancient geologic conditions in southern Sweden were ideal to preserve meteorites that fell to Earth about half a billion years ago. Researcher Birger Schmitz (working as a visiting professor at Rice University and now at the University of Lund, Sweden) and his colleagues in Göteborg, Sweden have analyzed over 40 of these rare fossil meteorites along with relict chromite grains collected from sites in a 250,000-square-kilometer area of 480-million-year-old limestone.</p>
</blockquote>

<p><a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1134%2FS0016702912080022#page-1" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Origin of fossil meteorites from Ordovician limestone in Sweden</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Mid-Ordovician  (
  ~470
    Ma)  limestone  exposed  in
  the Thorsberg quarry in southern Sweden was found out
  to contain anomalously high concentrations of meteorites: more than 80 fragments ranging from 
  ~1
   to 20 cm
  across were found over an area of 6000 m2</p>
</blockquote>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2014-11-18T15:37:01.053Z
2018-08-09T08:50:58.287Z
2018-08-09T08:50:58.287Z
DavePhD
<p>Dropstones sometimes occur in sedimentary rocks. These are foreign rocks and boulders that happened to &quot;drop&quot; into a sediment and were fossilised when the sediment was lithified.</p>
<p><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/JCvHd.jpg" alt="Dropstone" />
<sup>(<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IRD_mcr1.JPG" rel="nofollow noreferrer">source: Michael C. Rygel via Wikimedia Commons</a>)</sup></p>
<p>But what about meteorites? You can find meteorites here on Earth, and while such large blocks as pictured may be extremely rare, they do exist somewhere. We don't have a lot of meteorites now, but it seems to me that if we go back billions of years, it makes sense that somewhere, sometime, a meteorite has been incorporated into the rock record.</p>
<p>I suppose that it is also unlikely because most meteorites fall in the ocean is then subducted and the meteorite &quot;dropstones&quot; are lost to the mantle.</p>
<hr />
<p>EDIT</p>
<p>I found this recent (2020) paper talking about 20 cm large meteorites in Ordovician sediments, that came from the breakup of a larger asteroid:</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2020.116442" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Absolute dating of the L-chondrite parent body breakup with high-precision U–Pb zircon geochronology from Ordovician limestone</a></p>

<earth-history><sedimentology><meteorite>
Have meteorites been found in the oldest sedimentary rocks?
Gimelist
# Have meteorites been found in the oldest sedimentary rocks?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2014-11-18)

Dropstones sometimes occur in sedimentary rocks. These are foreign rocks and boulders that happened to "drop" into a sediment and were fossilised when the sediment was lithified.

![Dropstone](https://i.sstatic.net/JCvHd.jpg)
([source: Michael C. Rygel via Wikimedia Commons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IRD_mcr1.JPG))

But what about meteorites? You can find meteorites here on Earth, and while such large blocks as pictured may be extremely rare, they do exist somewhere. We don't have a lot of meteorites now, but it seems to me that if we go back billions of years, it makes sense that somewhere, sometime, a meteorite has been incorporated into the rock record.

I suppose that it is also unlikely because most meteorites fall in the ocean is then subducted and the meteorite "dropstones" are lost to the mantle.

---

EDIT

I found this recent (2020) paper talking about 20 cm large meteorites in Ordovician sediments, that came from the breakup of a larger asteroid:

[Absolute dating of the L-chondrite parent body breakup with high-precision U–Pb zircon geochronology from Ordovician limestone](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2020.116442)

**Tags:** earth-history, sedimentology, meteorite


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2014-11-18. Score: 4

Yes, meteorites have been found in limestone. See e.g. the following references:

[Geochemistry of meteorite-rich marine limestone strata and fossil meteorites from the lower Ordovician at Kinnekulle, Sweden](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X96002051):

> Thirteen fossil meteorites (⊘ = 1.5–9 cm) have been found in lower Ordovician Orthoceratite Limestone at Kinnekulle, Sweden. The meteorites were recovered from a 3.5 m thick quarried interval in the middle of a 30 m thick section of Orthoceratite Limestone.

[Tiny Traces of a Big Asteroid Breakup](http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/Mar04/fossilMeteorites.html):

> Ancient geologic conditions in southern Sweden were ideal to preserve meteorites that fell to Earth about half a billion years ago. Researcher Birger Schmitz (working as a visiting professor at Rice University and now at the University of Lund, Sweden) and his colleagues in Göteborg, Sweden have analyzed over 40 of these rare fossil meteorites along with relict chromite grains collected from sites in a 250,000-square-kilometer area of 480-million-year-old limestone.

[Origin of fossil meteorites from Ordovician limestone in Sweden](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1134%2FS0016702912080022#page-1):

> Mid-Ordovician (
> ~470
> Ma) limestone exposed in
> the Thorsberg quarry in southern Sweden was found out
> to contain anomalously high concentrations of meteorites: more than 80 fragments ranging from
> ~1
> to 20 cm
> across were found over an area of 6000 m2


---

