Moldavite

whelming consensus among earth scientists is that mol-

davites were formed about 14,700,000 years ago during
the impact of a giant meteorite in present-day Nrdlinger
Ries. Splatters of material that was melted by the impact
cooled while they were actually airborne and most fell in
Bohemia. Currently, moldavites have been found in area
that includes southern Bohemia, western Moravia, the
Cheb Basin (northwest Bohemia), Lusatia (Germany),
and Waldviertel (Austria).[1] Isotope analysis of sam-
ples of moldavites have shown a beryllium10 isotope
composition similar to the composition of Australasian
tektites (Australites)and Ivory Coast tektites (Ivorites).
Their similarity in beryllium-10 isotope composition in-
Moldavite from Besednice, Bohemia dicates that moldavites, Australites, and Ivorites consist
of near surface and loosely consolidated terrestrial sedi-
ments melted by hypervelocity impacts.[2]
Moldavite (Czech: Vltavn) is an olive-green or
dull greenish vitreous substance possibly formed by a 99% of all moldavite nds have come from the South
meteorite impact, which would make it one kind of Bohemian localities, 1% were found in South Moravian
tektite. They were introduced to the scientic public for localities. Only tens of pieces were found in the Lusa-
the rst time in 1786 as chrysolites from Tn nad Vl- tian area (near Dresden), Cheb basin area (West Bo-
tavou in a lecture by professor Josef Mayer of Prague hemia) and Northern Austria (near Radessen). Princi-
University, read at a meeting of the Bohemian Scien- pal occurrences of moldavites in Bohemia are associ-
tic Society (Mayer 1788). Zippe (1836) rst used the ated with Tertiary sediments of the esk Budjovice
term moldavite derived from the town of Moldauthein and Tebo Basins. The most prominent localities are
(Czech: Tn nad Vltavou) - now in Bohemia (the Czech concentrated in a NW-SE strip along the western mar-
Republic), from where the rst described pieces came gin of the esk Budjovice Basin. Majority of these
from. occurrences are bound to the Vrbe Member and Ko-
roseky Sandy Gravel. Prominent localities in the Tebo
Basin are bound to gravels and sands of the Domann
1 Origin Formation. In Moravia, moldavite occurrences are re-
stricted to an area roughly bounded by the towns of Te-
b, Znojmo and Brno. Taking into account the number
Moldavites bottle-green glass colour led to its being com- of pieces found, Moravian localities are considerably less
monly called Bouteillen-stein, and at one time it was re- productive than the Bohemian ones; however, the average
garded as an articial product, but this view is opposed weight of the moldavites found is much higher. The old-
to the fact that no remains of glassworks are found in est (primary) moldavite-bearing sediments lie between
the neighbourhood of its occurrence; moreover, pieces of Slavice and Teb. Majority of other localities in south-
the substance are widely distributed in Middle to Upper ern Moravia are associated with sediments of Miocene as
Miocene and younger uvial clays and gravelly sands in well as Pleistocene rivers that owed across this area more
Bohemia and Moravia. or less to the southeast, similar to the present streams of
In 1900, F. E. Suess pointed out that the gravel-size mol- Jihlava, Oslava a Jeviovka.
davites exhibited curious pittings and wrinkles on the sur-
face, which could not be due to the action of water, but re-
sembled the characteristic markings on many meteorites. 2 Use
Boldly attributing the material to a cosmic origin, he re-
garded moldavites as a special type of meteorite for which
he proposed the name of tektite. However, for a long The total amount of Moldavite scattered around the world
time, it was generally believed to be a variety of obsidian. is estimated at 275 tons.
Because of their dicult fusibility, extremely low water There are typically two grades of moldavite: high qual-
content, and its chemical composition, the current over- ity, often referred to as museum grade, and regular grade.

1
2 4 EXTERNAL SOURCES

Museum and regular grade moldavite can be told apart by

the way they look: The regular grade pieces are usually
darker and more saturated in their green colour, and the
surface is seen as closely spaced pitting or weathering.
This type sometimes appears to have been broken apart
from a larger chunk. Moldavite is also found to be com-
patible with borosilicate glass and can be fused to it with
ease.
The museum grade has a distinct fern-like pattern and
is much more translucent than the regular grade. There
is usually a fairly big dierence in the price between the
two. The museum grade ower bursts are much more
prized by the connoisseur. High-quality moldavite stones
are often used in hand-crafted jewellery and thus enter the
market away from mainstream jewellery fashions, more
centred on art and craft, and as such have gained an almost
cult status.
There is a new Moldavite museum in esk Krumlov,
Czech Repupblic.[3]

3 References
[1] Trnka, M.; Houzar, S. (2002). Moldavites: a review
PDF. Bulletin of the Czech Geological Survey 77 (4):
283302.

[2] Sereddin, F.; Herzog, G. F.; Koeberl, C. (2007).

Beryllium-10 concentrations of tektites from the
Ivory Coast and from Central Europe: Evidence
for near-surface residence of precursor materials.
Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 71 (6): 15741582.
doi:10.1016/j.gca.2006.12.007.

[3] Moldavite museum.

4 External sources
J. Baier: Zur Herkunft und Bedeutung der Ries-
Auswurfprodukte fr den Impakt-Mechanismus. -
Jber. Mitt. oberrhein. geol. Ver., N. F. 91, 9-29,
2009.

J. Baier: Die Auswurfprodukte des Ries-Impakts,

Deutschland, in Documenta Naturae, Vol. 162,
Mnchen, 2007. ISBN 978-3-86544-162-1
Mindat with location data

This article incorporates text from a publication now

in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911).
Encyclopdia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge Univer-
sity Press.
 3

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