Ahnighito Meteorite

The largest piece of the Cape York iron meteorite, weighing about 31 metric tons, brought from Greenland to New York aboard Robert Peary’s ship Hope in 1897 and now in the American Museum of Natural History. Inuit on the Melville Bay coast had worked iron from the Cape York fall for centuries to make harpoon tips and knives. Peary sold Ahnighito and two smaller masses (the Woman and the Dog) to the museum in 1904; it sits on supports driven to bedrock under the gallery floor.