The rock is nothing much to look at: 33 pounds and oval shaped. If you didn’t know it’s history, you probably wouldn’t be surprised that Donna Lewis’s family used it as a doorstop, later parking it in the front garden. It was even painted green for a time.
As it turned out, this was no ordinary rock. On Thursday, Donna and her husband George formally announced that the family rock picked out of a Kentucky cow pasture in the 1930 is in fact a meteorite, Fox News reported. Researchers from the University of Tennessee believe the ancient and very valuable rock came from a known meteorite strike that first turned up evidence in Tazewell, Ky. in 1853. “We’re extremely lucky to find something like this,” Cook said, according to an EKU press release, ” and to find one locally is a real plus for us.” The rock is estimated to be more than 4 and a half billion years old. In addition to being extremely rare, meteorites of this size are also valuable. In an October auction, cosmic rocks for sale had price tags ranging from the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
