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Science 4 May 1973:
Vol. 180. no. 4085, pp. 489 - 491
DOI: 10.1126/science.180.4085.489
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Articles

Iodine-129/Xenon-129 Age of Magnetite from the Orgueil Meteorite

Gregory F. Herzog 1, Edward Anders 1, E. C. Alexander Jr. 2, P. K. Davis 2, and R. S. Lewis 2

1 Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637
2 Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley 94720

Magnetite from the Orgueil C1 chondrite is only 2.0 ± 2.4 million years older by the iodine-xenon method than the next oldest meteorite, the Karoonda C4 chondrite. This age ties the primitive C1 chondrites to the extensive iodine-xenon chronology of normal chrondrites. If Karoonda and Orgueil magnetite formed from similar material, then the age difference is an upper limit to the formation time of these meteorites—and by customary extension, the solar system. Condensation, chondrule formation, accretion, and metamorphism of the Karoonda parent body all seem to have been completed within a few million years.

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)