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The Chinguetti meteorite is a find reputed to come from the vicinity of a large 'iron mountain' in Africa. The iron mountain is or contains hematite, an earthly rock, which contains iron ore and can appear rusted, just like a iron meteorite does.

The existence of a huge stony-iron mesosiderite approximately 45 kilometers from the Saharan city Chinguetti, Mauritania, has been a mystery since 1916, when Captain Gaston Ripert, a French consular official, claimed to have discovered 'a huge iron hill 40 metres (130 ft) high and 100 m (330 ft) long.' but also that it was made of a similar material to a meteorite.

Ripert said that he had been guided blindfolded by a local chieftain to a natural source of iron, at a 12 hour long camel ride to the south-east of Chinguetti.

He bagged a 4 kilogram fragment of rock, which found its way to Paris some years later, where geologist Alfred Lacroix pronounced that it was an important meteorite that had been discovered. However, despite the attempts of several expeditions since, the supposed meteorite could not be found again.

Ripert wrote to Professor Théodore Monod in 1934: 'I know that the general opinion is that the stone does not exist; that to some, I am purely and simply an impostor who picked up a metallic specimen. That to others, I am a simpleton who mistook a sandstone outcrop for an enormous meteorite. I shall do nothing to disabuse them, I know only what I saw.' Despite various searches over the years, Monod concluded in 1989 that Ripert had been mistaken: 'An error was made in the identification of the rock of a 40-metre hill that is entirely sedimentary with no trace of metal,' he wrote.

In 1980, former French air force officer Jacques Gallouédec was carrying out aerial surveys for the Mauritanian water authority, when he spotted a strange semi-circular ground formation to the south-east of Chinguetti. He sent details to Théodore Monod but the professor was unable to locate it. He is the only person alive today who claims to have seen Ripert's rock.

In 2000, finally Ripert was finally vindicated - Ripert was quite correct to report his mysterious find. Ripert had in fact seen something that would take a geologist to identify correctly. A US team found the site, and determined that there were remains of a meteorite there, but just a small one, and there was also hematite outcrop. Hematite is a type of iron ore, a rock high in iron, but geologists know that hematite is formed as part of the earth ;The hematite did not come from a meteorite. The Chinguetti fragment that was sent to Paris was analysed again , and it was concluded that it was from an a meteorite that was up to 80 cm (31 in) in radius, matching the remains found at the Chinguetti hematite outcrop.

External links

http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/E/ends/meteorite1.html
http://www.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk/etext/40/text/MAPS36Welten2.pdf
National Geographic Channel: 'The meteorite that vanished' documentary

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 [[File:Chinguetti meteorite.jpg|thumb|Chinguetti slice at the National Museum of Natural History, USA]]
-The '''Chinguetti meteorite''' is a find reputed to come from a large unconfirmed 'iron mountain' in Africa.
+The '''Chinguetti meteorite''' is a find reputed to come from the vicinity of a large  'iron mountain' in Africa. The iron mountain is or contains hematite, an earthly  rock, which contains iron ore and can appear rusted, just like a iron meteorite does.
 The existence of a huge stony-iron [[mesosiderite]] approximately 45 kilometers from the [[Sahara]]n city [[Chinguetti]], [[Mauritania]], has been a mystery since 1916, when Captain [[Gaston Ripert]], a French consular official, claimed to have discovered  'a huge iron hill 40 metres (130 ft) high and 100 m (330 ft) long.' but also that it was made of a similar material to a meteorite.