Errachidia 004 — Winonaite (Primitive Achondrite) (0.96 grams)

A genuinely rare and scientifically unusual meteorite. Errachidia 004 was recovered from a newly recognized dense collection area in the Moroccan Sahara in 2020, and classified as a winonaite — one of the rarest achondrite classes known, with fewer than 65 examples recovered worldwide.

Winonaites are primitive achondrites: material that started out chondritic but underwent partial melting and incomplete differentiation before that process was interrupted, preserving a transitional snapshot between unmelted asteroids and their fully differentiated, iron-cored cousins. Errachidia 004 is especially significant even within this rare group — it contains two distinct lithologies in the same fall: a metal-poor lithology (forsterite, enstatite, augite, sodic plagioclase) and a metal-rich lithology with substantial kamacite and taenite showing Widmanstätten patterning. Researchers studying the meteorite suggest it may represent transitional material between the winonaite class and the silicate-bearing IAB iron complex — evidence of a "rubble pile" parent body where fragments from very different depths were mixed and reassembled before final consolidation.

With a total recovered mass of only about 2.6 kg split across two lithologies, well-documented Errachidia 004 material — particularly pieces that clearly show the high-metal lithology's Widmanstätten structure — is genuinely scarce.

Classification: Primitive achondrite (Winonaite, dual-lithology/anomalous)
Found: Errachidia region, Morocco, 2020
TKW: ~2.64 kg