On the hunt for meteorites in the far reaches of the Sahara

You may have seen a meteorite before, even if you didn’t know it.

Nearly 100,000 pounds of meteoritic matter enters Earth’s atmosphere every day, scientists estimate. The vast majority burns up as it hurtles through the sky, creating shooting stars.

Of the few space rocks that fall to Earth, most end up in the ocean. The rest mostly go unnoticed, blending in with other stones.

But in the Mauritanian desert, herders have learned what to look for: rocks with a strikingly dark surface, known as the fusion crust. Though meteorites fall with the same frequency around the world, scientists say, they are especially easy to spot in places like this, where they stand out against the beige expanse.

Finding the rare rocks has become a popular pastime - and a business opportunity.

Driving from the Mauritanian capital to this remote Saharan outpost takes at least 18 hours, the last half on unmarked sandy tracks. Most people here are nomadic herders who spend part of the year moving through the desert with their animals. Few have an internet connection.

In 2011, nomads in neighbouring Morocco reported seeing a fireball light up the sky. Scientists later confirmed that a massive Martian meteorite, which they named Tissint, had made landfall there. Fragments of the meteorite, which researchers believe could contain evidence of water on the Red Planet, were divided among museums, collectors and research institutions.

The discovery sparked a wave of interest across the region. Word spread to even the most isolated parts of Mauritania. The search was on.

Herder Mohamed Bagouma reckons it was about a decade ago that he started looking for meteorites.

“To me it was strange,” said Bagouma, who now keeps binoculars and any distinctive rocks he comes across on his car dashboard. “We had thought the rocks were useless.”

As Bagouma and his son traverse the desert with their camels, they keep their eyes on the ground. Only once, said Bagouma, did he find a stone of any value, but he remains hopeful, recalling the story of another local herdsman who found a meteorite so valuable he was able to move his family to the city.

Bagouma brings the rocks he’s collected to Lamine Henoun, the local expert.

A 50-year-old part-time security guard who studied literature in college and speaks multiple languages, Henoun has developed an encyclopedic knowledge of meteorites. The most common, he said, are chondrites, which come from the asteroid belt. The rarest - and most precious - are from Mars and the moon.

“This is very good,” Henoun said, studying one of several rocks Bagouma presented to him on a recent evening outside his family’s tents.

From a small bag, Henoun took out a magnifying glass and a magnetic strip. Most meteorites contain iron-nickel, an alloy that attracts magnets and isn’t found in terrestrial rocks. He held the strip to the most promising rock and shook his head in disappointment. There was no attraction.

“Most of the search is luck,” he said.

Each day, herders bring him rocks; only one or two a month are worth anything. On those occasions, Henoun connects to the internet using Starlink at the customs office in town and posts pictures to Facebook and TikTok, hoping to catch the attention of collectors.

The most he ever made on a single sale, from what turned out to be a rare type of chondrite, was $55, about the same as his monthly pay check.

“The secret of meteorites, which is not a good secret, is that the poor people here aren’t benefiting,” he said.

Ahmedou Cheikh Abba is the exception. The 36-year-old imam said he had never thought much about space rocks until one day in 2023, when he was with a team digging for gold near the Algerian border.

As he took a smoke break, “a stone that was darker than the others caught my attention,” he said. “And inside the stone, there were different colors. I knew it could be the sign of a meteorite.”

Abba posted the pictures to Facebook and the responses poured in. He sold it for $2,500 to a buyer from Morocco, who suspected it was a lunar meteorite.

After analysis, the man followed up with a discouraging update: The rock was just a rock. By then, though, Abba had shared the money with his extended family and taken his children on vacation.

“Everyone knows that risk is a part of it,” he said with a shrug.

Mauritania’s meteorite industry is entirely unregulated.

On a recent day in Nouakchott, the capital, a group of middle-aged men - all self-declared meteorite dealers - sat by the side of the road, chatting under a tent made of carpets and blankets. When journalists arrived, they whipped out an array of rocks.

Hama Sidi Othaman smiled as he showed off his wares. He said he’d been hunting for meteorites since 2011.

One of the rocks before him, he explained, was on sale. The price: $64,000. It was a good deal, he insisted.

“This,” Sidi Othaman said proudly, “is sure to be from the moon.”

Ely Cheikh Mohamed Navee is the president of Mauritania’s astronomy association and, according to him, the only Mauritanian with a doctorate in planetary science.

There are six potential meteorite craters that have been identified in the country, Navee said, with two of them confirmed by scientists and recorded in the Canada-based Earth Impact Database.

Robert Ward, a meteorite collector in Arizona, is among a growing number of citizen scientists driving the trade in space rocks. He said some of his best samples have come from North Africa, including Mauritania.

He suspects there are similar treasures strewn across the landscapes of the American Southwest, but “everyone here is just in front of a television set,” he said. “There, people are out looking every single day.”

While Mauritania has no museum to house its meteorites, and no proper marketplace for them, Navee agreed his nation has one clear advantage: “Nomads are the best collectors in the world,” he said.

And the meteorites found here, he said, have much to teach us about the universe - and our place in it.

“The future,” Navee said, is “the things that come from space.”

The Washington Post