. . . Martian found in Los Angeles! While Robert Verish, professional meteorite hunter/dealer (aka Bolide chaser) was clearing out his back yard towards the end of last year, he came across a box of samples he had collected from the Mojave Desert some 20 years earlier. Way back then he didn't really know what a meteorite looked like, but collected the samples anyway since they appeared interesting. In the intervening years his appreciation of meteorites and skill in their identification became more pronounced such that, when he came face to face with the samples 20 years later, he knew exactly what they were. He immediately sent some of the rocks to the University of California, at Los Angeles, whereupon their unearthly nature was confirmed. Indeed, the samples were found to come from not just from any old meteorite, but from an interesting class known as basaltic shergottites. This ties them to a group of only 14 samples (or 15, depending on whether 2 others members are from the same sample) known collectively as SNC Meteorites - in plain English, Verish's new samples had come from Mars ! There are two separate stones, which will be known in future as the Los Angeles meteorite (or "Miguel" and "Gabriel" if Verish has his way) weighing together some 700g. Clearly these samples will be of tremendous interest to the scientific community and studies of them will be reported at the forthcoming Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston in March.