Bendegó

The Bendegó meteorite, discovered in 1784 in the Brazilian state of Bahia, is the largest iron meteorite found on Brazilian soil. In 1888 it was taken to the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, where it became one of the main exhibits. Weighing approximately 5.36 tonnes and measuring over 2 metres in length, it is one of the largest iron meteorites in the world. This meteorite boasts Widmanstätten patterns, which are visible after polishing, and its composition includes smaller proportions of other elements such as phosphorus and sulphur, in addition to iron and nickel.

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Bendegó survived a devastating fire, which destroyed the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro in 2018. This iron meteorite, thanks to its high-temperature resistant composition, escaped the disaster almost unscathed. The fire that engulfed the museum destroyed a huge number of collections, including extremely valuable historical and natural history exhibits. The Bendegó, however, remained almost untouched thanks to its high resilience.

Based on the ten centimetre layer of oxidation on which the meteorite lay and the missing part of its underside, it is estimated that it had been in place for thousands of years.