Tennessee Family Finds Out Their Doorstop is a Four-Billion-Year-Old Meteorite

Posted by Heartmind News Flash Tuesday, October 23rd, 2012

(The Daily Mail) Eastern Kentucky University has acquired a 33-pound meteorite from an eastern Tennessee family that used the space rock as a doorstop and flower bed ornament over the years.

The meteorite was initially found in a cow pasture near Tazewell, Tennessee, in the 1930s by Tilmon Brooks, the late grandfather of Donna Lewis, a school secretary in Pineville, Kentucky.

Tests at the University of Tennessee concluded that the meteorite likely came from a known meteorite strike that had first turned up evidence in Tazewell in 1853.

EKU’s Department of Physics and Astronomy Chairman, Jerry Cook, announced that the meteorite would makes its debut at the Kentucky Academy of Science annual conference on campus over the weekend.

Cook said the meteorite, which the university purchased from the Lewises, will be used for educational and outreach purposes, a fact that pleases the former owners most of all.

The rock is estimated to be more than 4 and a half billion years old.