Connecting Lunar Meteorite Dhofar 961 to the South Pole Aitken Basin through Lunar Prospector Gamma-ray Data

Introduction: Lunar meteorite Dhofar 961, a complex, lithic-clast-rich impact breccia [1,2], was called out by [3-6] as a candidate for an origin in the South Pole – Aitken (SPA) Basin region of the Moon (the SPA Terrane) on the basis of its relatively mafic, but nonmare lithologic and major-element chemical composition. It also has an incompatible-element signature that differs from the KREEP-dominated signature of the Apollo samples [3] and most incompatibleelement-rich lunar meteorites. For example, it has P2O5/K2O ~2, about twice that of Apollo impact-melt groups. Moreover, Dhofar 961 contains a prominent impact-melt-breccia lithic-clast component that is significantly more mafic than the Apollo mafic impactmelt breccia groups [4-6] (Fig. 1).