Overview
- The Museo Italiano di Scienze Planetarie confirmed and named the specimen “Meteorite di Monte Bondone,” with University of Camerino scientists and a listing by the Meteoritical Society.
- The rock weighs about 188 grams and is an ordinary L5 chondrite, a common stony meteorite from the asteroid belt that formed in the early solar system about 4.5 billion years ago.
- Efrem Rigotti came across the stone on Monte Bondone while searching for lost car keys with a metal detector and later submitted it to the Prato museum in September 2024.
- Researchers spent years testing and comparing the sample before announcing the extraterrestrial origin and formal designation after completing all analyses.
- The find is the first confirmed meteorite in Trentino and the 44th in Italy, and the museum director said it is the first real meteorite identified among hundreds of public submissions over two decades.