Together with the farmer Piet van der Westhuizen, who had already discovered seven specimens, among them the meteorites exported by Hesselbach, Range explored the wider area on horseback in search for further undiscovered masses – with success: “On our rides through the country on various occasions we found the messengers of another world on the spots where they had fallen onto the Earth.”
Range stated that the meteorites are usually found with the bulk of the mass embedded in the soil, though some of their finds were recovered from on top of the surface. The soils in the eastern part of the Gibeon district belong to the Karoo and Post-Karoo layers and are covered by the Kalahari lime formations. The meteorites found by Range were recovered partly from Karroo layers and partly from on top of Kalahari limestone plateaus. Because the latter formation is considered of diluvial origin Range concluded that the terrestrial age of the meteorites could not exceed these layers.
Range’s research from 1911 to 1913 brought to light 51 meteoritic masses including those found before his survey. The total weight of these Meteorites was 15,396 kg. The 37 masses piled up and later caged in in the public garden in Windhoek originate from Range’s field collection. After several donations to foreign museums and prominent collectors, including a 650 kg mass which went to South Africa, 33 masses were left. Of these 28 are on public display today in Post Street Mall in Windhoek.
Spencer and Citron – extending the strewn field
In the following years additional masses were found and in 1930 the number of known Gibeon meteorites had risen to 54. Spencer (1941) noted their unusually wide distribution over an area of several hundred square miles. Based on the considerable size of most of these masses Spencer concluded that the shower must have been a “swarm of meteorites rather than a single mass broken up in the Earth’s atmosphere.”