Petrology and Geochemistry of the Nwa 3368 Eucrite

Introduction: A considerable amount of debate exists on the petrogenesis of eucrites, basaltic meteorites believed to have originated on the asteroid 4 Vesta [1]. One school of thought, developed by Stolper [2], suggests that most eucrites are primary partial melts of chondritic material, while another by Mason [3] suggests that eucrites are residual liquids that resulted from fractional crystallization from a chondritic magma that had previously crystallized diogenites. Many scientists have further speculated on the formation event, supplementing ideas to the models by Mason and Stolper ([4], [5], etc.). In order to distinguish between hypotheses, an understanding of both the major and trace element compositions of all eucrites is imperative. In this study, we report the petrology and trace element geochemistry of NWA 3368.