Dear Mike:

Thanks for your note. I appreciate your frustration, and it is

certainly true that there may be martian meteorites out there that do

not look anything like the ones that we have already recognized.

However, people like Tim McCoy are very competent petrologists with a

great deal of experience in distinguishing meteorites from

"meteorwrongs." Oxygen isotope analyses are very time consuming and

expensive, and Bob Clayton, who does this work, isn't going to analyze a

rock that he doesn't think might be a meteorite. I don't know what to

recommend at this point. You might ask for a second opinion from Marty

Prinz, meteorite curator at the American Museum of Natural History

(prinz@mac1.amnh.org). Regards, Hap McSween

Harry Y. McSween, Jr.

Department of Geological Sciences

University of Tennessee

Knoxville, TN 37996-1410

tel. (423) 974-9805

fax. (423) 974-2368

email. mcsween@utk.edu