Christie's, the luxury auction house normally associated with listings of dazzling jewels and works of fine arts produced by household names, has an offering that would, on first glance, leave many scratching their heads — a modest doghouse with an 18cm hole torn crudely in the roof.
The doghouse belonged to Roky, a Costa Rican German shepherd. The no-frills shelter was damaged on the night of April 23, 2019.
As the auction listing explains: "Part of a shower of exotic stone meteorites loaded with organic compounds, crashed through his doghouse, barely missing him. The formal coordinates of Roky's home, 10°24'9.35"N 84°21'51.26"W, are now forever part of the scientific literature."
The 1.4m-high doghouse has since been removed from the rainforest and mounted on an astroturf-covered display platform complete with a dog bowl.
"A badly weathered pressed-wood floor was demolished by the meteorite impact and the rotted wood support columns have been replaced," the auction house said.
The meteorite was named Aguas Zarcas after the closest city, as is customary when naming fallen extraterrestrial masses of stone or metal.
"[Such meteorites] not only contain tens of thousands of prebiotics, including amino acids, but also pre-solar grains ranging up to twice the age of the solar system," Christie's said.
Close calls with falling meteorites like the one Roky experienced are rare, as are injuries and deaths.
NASA has previously noted that the first recorded human injury from a meteorite was when Ann Hodges of Sylacauga, Alabama, was "severely bruised by a 3.6-kilogram stony meteorite that crashed through her roof in November 1954".
How high will it go?
At time of publication, the the most recent of 16 bids for the doghouse was for $US1,600 ($2,232)but, with eight days remaining and the auction house estimating a price tag between $US200,000 and $US300,000, the final bid is anybody's guess.
"A meteorite that battered a mailbox, tearing it off its post, in Claxton, Georgia, was sold at auction in 2007 for $83,000," Christie's noted in its listing.
"The most famous object impacted by a meteorite occurred almost immediately after a young woman bought her grandmother's old Chevy Malibu for about $400.
"After being struck by the Peekskill meteorite one week later, she sold the car for $69,000. It subsequently changed hands for $230,000 in 2010."
Christie's has also listed the Valera meteorite, an obelisk-shaped hunk of rock it is says is the only meteorite that has caused a documented death — although the estimated price tag of between $US3,000 and $US5,000 is not likely to attract as much attention.
"[The] exotic rock was found alongside a cow's carcass whose neck and clavicle had been pulverised."
