EXPOSURE AGE DISTRIBUTIONS OF METEORITES

Even though a single exposure age value may be equivocal, as we noted above, the impressive data base on exposure age distributions of individual meteorite classes available today provides crucial information on how meteorites are delivered to Earth. Exposure ages tell us mainly how long meteorites have been travelling as metersized objects in interplanetary space and peaks in exposure age histograms indicate common impact events that led to the ejection of many meteorites from a common parent body. 

We will next inspect exposure age distributions more closely, with the goal of obtaining additional information on the orbital and parent-body histories of meteorites. Later we will discuss this information in the context of dynamical models of meteorite delivery (see also Wieler and Graf 2001). 

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