The Gancedo meteorite was discovered underground on September 10, 2016 by a team of explorers from the Astronomy Association of the Chaco (
Asociación de Astronomía del Chaco). The discovery site is several kilometers south of the town of
Gancedo, in the southwest of Chaco province. The discovery was made in the area known as
Campo del Cielo ("The Sky-Field" or "Field of Heaven"), where approximately 4,500 years ago a shower of metallic meteorites originating from a single parent body fell to earth. During the extraction of the meteorite, the presence of subsurface water put the meteorite in danger. The nearby town of Gancedo provided machinery that made the extraction possible, and for this reason the team making the extraction decided to name the meteorite after the town of Gancedo. This is the first discovery on such a scale to be carried out through studies conducted by a local team from the Chaco province. With this discovery, the Chaco region is the source of the third and fourth largest meteorites found to date. The most massive single-piece meteorite found to date is the
Hoba meteorite, which was found in 1920 under a farmer's field in
Namibia and weighs over 66 tons. == References ==