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Artist's impression of activities at an Iron Age settlement: in the right foreground men can be seen storing grain in a pit. The 2350 years old Danebury meteorite was recovered, but not instantly recognized as extraterrestrial, from such a pit during archaeological excavations of Danebury Hill, an Iron Age fort in Hampshire, England, in 1974. For details, see the article by Pillinger et al. pp. 946–957. Cover picture courtesy of Hampshire County Council.     

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La Paz Icefi eld (LAP) 04840 is a 55 g Rumuruti chondrite that was recovered from Antarctica in 2004. Its mineralogy, oxygen isotopic composition, water content, and 4.34‐4.38 Ga age make it a very unusual meteorite. Plane polarized light image showing hornblende (pleochroic brown) and minor biotite, along with olivine, pyroxene, plagioclase, chromite, pentlandite, and pyrrhotite (the latter three are opaque). Approximately 15% of the sample is hornblende, with ~1% of biotite. Righter et al. discuss the meteorite in their paper on pp. 1679‐1685. Width of view is ~3.5 mm. Image courtesy of K. Righter.     

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Cover: Miller Range 07273 is a melt breccia related to H chondrites that has some anomalous features. This image, which covers an area approximately 0.37 mm tall and 0.41 mm wide, is an EBSD (electron back scatter diffraction) image of a deformed barred olivine chondrule in MIL 07273, with colors representing olivine crystal orientations (IPF‐z), and monochrome showing crystallinity (band contrast) in other grains. Data suggest the principal stress orientation was generally up‐down in this image, with deformation of olivine involving rotation around the <010> direction (see article by A. Ruzicka et al. on p. 1964). Image provided by A. Ruzicka.     

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Portions of the Gao‐Guenie H5 chondrite that fell in Burkina Faso in 1960 are impact‐melted. Left: high‐resolution color scan of thin section; right: refl ected light image (mosaic) of thin section. On pp. 1022–1045, Martin Schmieder et al. interpret the Gao‐Guenie impact melt breccia (image) as a sample from a melt injection dike in the basement of an impact crater, generated during an impact event on an H chondrite asteroid ~300 million years ago. Images courtesy of M. Schmieder.     

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Eucrite Elephant Moraine (EET) 87520 in crossed polars (background) and a rare earth element pattern of lunar ferroan anorthosite 15415 (inset). These two images highlight two areas of Michael J. Drake's fundamental contributions to planetary science: his career‐long interest in the origin of the HED meteorites and their likely parent body asteroid 4 Vesta, and his contribution to understanding the complementary nature of Eu anomalies in lunar basalts and anorthosites.     

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BSE image of a polished thick section EET 87720,41 containing an igneous‐textured granitic clast, prepared from an interior chip of a polymict ureilite EET 87720. The clast is not indigenous to the ureilite parent body, but it provides evidence for the formation of evolved melts on an unknown parent body (a volatile‐rich parent body perhaps resembling early Mars) in the early solar system. The scale bar size is 1 mm. Andrew Beard et al. describe the clast in detail in their paper on pp. 1613–1623. (Image courtesy of A. Beard).     

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Photo of the largest chunk of the Tissint Martian meteorite, weighed 1.28 kg, showing dark black fusion crust decorated with numerous glazy and smooth patches of olivine phenocrysts. The fl at triangle surface is probably a fractured surface. The sample is curated in the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Science. Lin et al. discuss the meteorite in their article on pp. 2201–2218. Photo courtesy of Yangting Lin.     

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Cover: Background–Orion Nebula; bottom left corner–combined elemental map in Mg (red), Ca (green), and Al Kα X–rays of a compound ultrarefractory CAI–bearing inclusion from the reduced CV3 carbonaceous chondrite Efremovka. The CAI consists of a Fluffy Type A inclusion, an ultrarefractory inclusion, and an amoeboid olivine aggregate (see paper by Ivanova et al. on p. 2107).     

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The 15.5‐ton main mass of the Willamette iron on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The deep cavities are characteristic of one side of the meteorite; they were produced by corrosion. Alan Rubin et al. discuss shock effects in the meteorite in their paper on pp. 1984–1994. Image © 2007 Darryl Pitt/Macovich.