LL6Dhofar, Zufar, Oman (18°21’ N, 54° 24’ E)

To enable scientists to refer to the unique attributes of a given meteorite, there must be a nomenclature system, and so a committee of scientists name meteorites after the location to which they’ve been “delivered,” (e.g., a city, village, mountain, river, county, etc.). In a desert, where there are few distinguishing geological features, meteorites are named after a grid encompassing a restricted area and are assigned a sequential number. Dhofar 1658 is the 1658th meteorite to be catalogued following its recovery in the Dhofar grid of Oman bordering Yemen. Dhofar 1658 experienced extreme thermal metamorphism on its parent asteroid: its once-spherical chondrules were extensively recrystallized and the mineral grains within the rock (which initially had diverse compositions) became chemically uniform. It was derived from the LL parent asteroid responsible for other LL (low-iron, low metallic iron) chemical group of meteorites. The meteorite is a breccia; it is made up of small metamorphosed rock fragments fused together by minor impact-melting along grain boundaries.