An elongate year-day concentration of CM meteoroid falls between 1921 and 1969 is inconsistent with a random flux of CM meteoroids and suggests that most or all such meteorites, and perhaps the Kaidun C-E chondrite breccia, resulted from streams of meteoroids in nearly circular, Earth-like orbits. To establish whether the post-1920 cluster might have arisen from random sampling, we determined the year-day distribution of 14 falls between 1879 and 1969 by treating each as the corner of a cell of specified dimensions (e.g. 30 years x 30 days) and calculated how many falls occurred in that cell. We then compared the CM cell distribution with random distributions over the same range of years. The results show that for 30 x 30 and 45 x 45 cells, fewer than 5 percent of random sets match the CM distribution with respect to maximum cell content and number of one-fall cells.

We report shock facies and RNAA data for 13 siderophile, lithophile and chalcophile volatile/mobile trace elements (Ag, Au, Bi, Cd, Co, Cs, Ga, In, Rb, Se, Te, Tl, Zn) in interior portions of 19 different L3-6 chondrites from Victoria Land, Antartica.

We review our procedures for selecting, preparing and analyzing meteorite samples, present new analyses of 16 ordinary chondrites, and discuss variations of Fe, S and Si in the L-group. A tendency for Fe/Mg, S/Mg and Si/Mg to be low in L chondrites of fades d to f testifies that post-metamorphic shock melting played a significant role in the chemical diversification of the L-group. However, these ratios also vary widely and sympathetically in melt-free chondrites, indicating that much of the L-group's chemical variation arose prior to thermal metamorphism and is in that sense primary. If all L-chondrites come from one parent body, type-correlated chemical trends suggest: 1) that the body had a traditional “onion skin” structure, with metamorphic intensity increasing with depth; and 2) that it formed from material that became more homogeneous, slightly poorer in iron, and significantly richer in sulfur as accretion proceeded.

Bulk chemical and mineral analyses of five L6 chondrites of shock facies d to f bring the number of L6 falls analyzed by Jarosewich to 20 and enable us: 1) to examine the chemical effects of shock melting in chondrites of the same petrologic type that presumably sample a limited stratigraphic range in their parent body; and 2) to seek depth-related chemical variations by comparing the compositions of L3 and melt-free L6 chondrites. The mean Fe/Mg, Si/Mg, S/Mg and Ni/Mg ratios of melt-free L6 chondrites (shock facies a to c) are virtually identical to those of L3 chondrites, suggesting that L-group material had the same bulk composition early (L6) and late (L3) in the accretion of the parent body. Wider variations of S/Mg and Ni/Mg in L6 chondrites may signify that L6 material was less well mixed than L3, or that some mobilization of metal and troilite occurred at shock intensities (facies c) too low to melt silicates. L6 chondrites that experienced shock melting of silicates (facies d to f) show wide variations of Fe/Mg, Si/Mg, S/Mg and Ni/Mg. It appears that most of the major element variation in the L-group is tertiary (shock-related) rather than primary (nebular, accretionary) or secondary (metamorphic). There is some evidence that L-group chondrites comprise two subgroups with different Fe/S ratios, but these subgroups are now poorly defined and their significance is unknown.