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Job lot of nantan meteorites, The Nantan fall occurring in China during 1516 AD is one of the rare witnessed iron meteorite falls. The official record of the Nantan fall relates that "During summertime in May of Jiajing 11th year, stars fell from the northwest, five to six fold long, waving like snakes and dragons. They were as bright as lightning and disappeared in seconds." The strewn field of the Nantan fall is approximately 8 kilometers wide by 28 kilometers in length, covering the towns of Lihu and Yaozhai in Nantan County, Guangxi, China. Meteorites from the Nantan fall exhibit a wide range of shapes varying through elliptical, flat-iron, semi-sheered, spherical, triangle, tongue and irregular shapes.
Nantan is a nickel-iron meteorite with an average composition of 92.35% iron and 6.96% nickel that is classified as a IIICD coarse octahedrite. Nantan meteorite specimens exhibit Widmanstatten patterns 1mm to 3mm in width that are readily discerned in polished and prepared pieces. A number of minerals have been found in the Nantan meteorites, with kamacite and taenite dominating. Less commonly occurring are cliftonite, graphite, lawrencite, plessite, scheribersite and triolite. The total weight of the Nantan fall is estimated at approximately 9,500 kilograms with individual specimens varying between 10 grams and 2000 kilograms in size. While these strange metal "rocks" were known to local inhabitants for centuries, the Nantan fall lay mostly untouched until China's "Great Leap Forward" in 1958 when a shortage of iron for steel production prompted government interest and scrutiny of Nantan meteorites. Fortunately, their melting point proved too high to be of use in local blast furnaces so many specimens of Nantan were spared.
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