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The Search For The Missing Mantles Of Differentiated Asteroids: Evidence From Taxonomic A-Class Asteroids And Olivine-Dominated Achondrite Meteorites, Michael Peter Lucas
The Search For The Missing Mantles Of Differentiated Asteroids: Evidence From Taxonomic A-Class Asteroids And Olivine-Dominated Achondrite Meteorites, Michael Peter Lucas
USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations
The apparent rarity of taxonomic A-class asteroids poses a significant paradox for understanding asteroid differentiation and the dynamical evolution of the early solar system. Based on results from asteroid taxonomic surveys, and on the abundances and mineralogy of different achondrite meteorites, it appears that olivine-dominated mantle remnants are missing from both the asteroid population and in meteorite collections. Several scenarios to explain this paradox have been proposed: (1) olivine mantle material has been stripped away by collisions and only remains as small fragments (< ~5 km), (2) A-class asteroids are abundant but have been altered in some way masking their presence, or (3) differentiated asteroids did not form thick olivine-rich mantles.
We have approached these questions through the collection of taxonomic and observational data on known A-class …