EON

In what was initially thought to be an act of vandalism, a police investigation has found that an SUV in Grimsby, Ontario, was in fact struck by a small fragment of a meteorite.

The vehicle’s owners, the Garchinski family, found that it’s windshield had been cracked and that the offending stone had damaged the hood and the garage door on it’s downward trajectory, and the residents initially assumed that it had been thrown by a vandal, prompting a call to police.

“I thought it was vandalism for sure,” Tony told a phalanx of reporters crowded onto the driveway of his Leawood Dr. home yesterday. “Who thinks a meteorite is going to crash-land on your car?”

However, the stone was very unusual in it’s immense density and odd coloring, prompting the Garchinskis to save it as a curiosity.

Several days after the car was damaged, Ms. Garchinski saw a news broadcast on a recent meteorite event in which a particularly large rock in space had entered the atmosphere over the Ontario sky and largely burned up, however local scientists still hoped to find small fragments of the rock in the Grimsby area. Ms. Ms. Garchinski noticed that the meteorites presented in the broadcast were very similar in appearance and physical properties to the rock which had struck her vehicle.

“They’re probably the oldest rocks that you or I or just about anyone else will ever hold,” said a grinning McCausland, carefully gripping black-coated space pebble in a gloved hand. “We’re talking 4.6 billion years old.”

This also helped to explain the large amount of damage done by the rock, which seemed to indicate that it was traveling much faster than anyone might be able to throw.

She called the University of Western Ontario, and just from the description of the rock the University felt that it was worth sending out an investigative team of researchers to inspect the stone and the damage it had caused.

The researchers had no difficulty determining that it was a meteorite, as it’s composition was unlike any rock on earth and extremely similar to known meteorites.

Because it landed on their property, the meteorite belongs to the Garchinskis, however they have lent it to the University of Western Ontario for several weeks to permit it to be studied.

It has already become one of the world’s most extensively studied meteorites, as scientists carefully pick and probe at it with the most advanced devices available, eager to gather as much data as possible while they still can.

The data gathered is so extensive that scientists have already narrowed down it’s most likely orbit.

The Garchinskis are unsure what they will do with the meteorite when it is returned, however, it’s small size (45g) indicates that it will only be worth a few hundred dollars if sold.