Labenne Meteorites is a private organization specialized in finding and supplying meteorites to institutions and private collectors.
Every year since the 1970s, governments from USA (ANSMET, Antarctic Search for Meteorite Program), Japan (NIPR, National Institute of Polar Research) and Europe (EUROMET) have sponsored expeditions to retrieve meteorites in Antarctica. However, it has only been since the 1990s that warm deserts like the Sahara have revealed their remarkable discovery potential. Our numerous finds are certainly witness to this fact. Through systematic and dedicated searching, we have found thousands of meteorites - many of which have attracted serious scientific interest.
In addition to the Lunar samples from Apollo missions and future samples from Mars (Mars Sample Return), Lunar and Martian meteorites arrive on Earth from unexplored, uncharted regions of the Moon and Mars, and inspire extensive research.
Interest in such exceptional meteorites is on the rise in both the scientific community and the general public, as fascination for all things related to Space, particularly Mars and the Moon, goes sky-high.
Our team was filmed during meteorite hunting, see a short sequence of the 52 minutes movie "Meteorite Hunters" filmed by Laurent Legall (http://www.freerunpictures.com/fr/references.htm then click on "See Hunters of Meteorites" or directly to http://www.freerunpictures.com/video/meteorite.htm)
Our Scientific Roots
Over the last eleven years, we've organized expeditions to find and collect new meteorites in the warm deserts of the world, primarily the Sahara and Sultanat d'Oman. Our expeditions have led us to discover several thousand new meteorites, known by the names Sahara, Dhofar and ITQIY.
They have been the object of extensive scientific research in the world's largest universities, research institutes and museums in Europe, the United States and Japan. Our finds are curated and exhibited in the most prestigious collections in the world; the Natural History Museum in London, the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, Das Naturhistorische Museum Wien in Vienna, Museum Für Naturkunde in Berlin, American Museum of National History in New York, Chicago Field Museum in Chicago, in Japan and Taïwan.
We are members of the Meteoritical Society, the official organization governing the classification and reference of new meteorites affiliated with the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry of the University of Arkansas, in the United States. The Meteoritical Society is also responsible for the scientific journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science, entirely devoted to meteorite research and the Meteoritical Bulletin. All our meteorites are recognized and classified by this organization and furthermore, we own and have legal rights to every meteorite listed on our site.
To verify official information on a specific meteorite Search The Data Base, for publication http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abstract_service.html
As members of the Meteoritical Society, we guarantee the authenticity of each meteorite we sell.
Meteoriticaly Yours,
Luc Labenne