Rhiannon Mayne

Oscar and Juanita Monnig Endowed Chair of Meteoritics and Planetary Science Texas Christian University

  • Fort Worth TX

Museum curator and researcher specializing in the study of meteorites and planetary science, as well as education and public outreach.

Contact

Texas Christian University

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Biography

I am the Curator of the Oscar E. Monnig Meteorite Collection. This is one of the world’s largest university-based meteorite collections, which also includes a world-class museum, the Monnig Meteorite Gallery. Its presence at TCU offers both my undergraduate and graduate students unique opportunities in research, curation, and public outreach. I have been a Research Associate at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) for much of time here at TCU. In 2010, I was a member of the Antarctic Search for Meteorites field team, spending 2 months in Antarctica collecting meteorites whilst trying to stay warm.

My research explores the processes that occurred during the early history of our Solar System, with a primary focus on understanding the formation of differentiated bodies (those with a core, mantle, crust structure). My students and I primarily study the mineralogy, geochemistry, and spectra of asteroidal meteorites to gather information about planetary formation and Solar System evolution

Areas of Expertise

Planets
Meteors
Astroids

Education

University of Tennessee, Knoxville

PhD

Geology

2008

Edinburgh University

BSc

Geology

2002

Languages

  • English

Media Appearances

Ready to launch: Students create app to make meteorite gallery more inclusive

TCU 360  online

2022-04-29

“All of that came to a head for me about three years ago and I thought, we are not offering an accessible gallery,” said Rhiannon Mayne, the collection curator and associate professor of environmental sciences at TCU. “If you think about if you are visually impaired […] coming into a gallery that’s all text and objects to look at, what can you take away from it?”

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Asteroid Named After Rhiannon Mayne, Associate Professor and Curator of The Monnig Meteorite Gallery

TCU College of Science & Engineering  online

2021-07-23

Responsible for the designation of small bodies in the solar system, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) Small Body Nomenclature Working Group names minor planets and comets, dwarf planets, and satellites of minor planets. It recently released its latest bulletin of asteroid names, and Associate Professor Rhiannon Mayne, Ph.D., was notified that she made the list. Asteroid 27529 (Rhiannonmayne = 2000 HJ64) is roughly 2.8 km in diameter and is located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Discovered on April 26, 2000, Rhiannonmayne was first observed from Anderson Mesa Station, one of two sites of Lowell Observatory in Arizona.

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Rhiannon Mayne Collects Meteorites

TCU Magazine  online

2018-12-21

The native of Northamptonshire in the United Kingdom traded childhood astronaut ambitions for a career in geology. Now TCU’s Oscar and Juanita Monnig Endowed Chair of Meteoritics and Planetary Science, the associate professor of geology is a pre-eminent expert on meteorites. Mayne specializes in researching differentiation, or looking for clues about how extraterrestrial rocks formed over time. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution, Mayne became curator of the Oscar E. Monnig Meteorite Gallery in 2009.

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Articles

Qarabawi’s Camel Charm: Tracing the meteoritic origins of a cultural artifact

Meteoritics & Planetary Science

2020

Qarabawi’s Camel Charm was acquired from Abdullah Qarabawi of the Ababda tribe of eastern Egypt. The charm consists of a chain with four links and an ~6.5 cm diameter flattened disk with the Arabic inscription “Allahu Akbar,” which translates as “God is Greatest.” Belief in the evil eye is prevalent among the Ababda, even to the modern day, and as men identify camels and the cultural objects and activities related to them as one of their most important possessions, charms and amulets are often used to ward off its influence.

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Experimental insights into Stannern‐trend eucrite petrogenesis

Meteoritics & planetary science

2017

The incompatible trace element‐enriched Stannern‐trend eucrites have long been recognized as requiring a distinct petrogenesis from the Main Group‐Nuevo Laredo (MGNL) eucrites. Barrat et al. (2007) proposed that Stannern‐trend eucrites formed via assimilation of crustal partial melts by a MGNL‐trend magma. Previous experimental studies of low‐degree partial melting of eucrites did not produce sufficiently large melt pools for both major and trace element analyses. Low‐degree partial melts produced near the solidus are potentially the best analog to the assimilated crustal melts. We partially melted the unbrecciated, unequilibrated MGNL‐trend eucrite NWA 8562 in a 1 atm gas‐mixing furnace, at IW‐0.5, and at temperatures between 1050 and 1200 °C. We found that low‐degree partial melts formed at 1050 °C are incompatible trace element enriched, although the experimental melts did not reach equilibrium at all temperatures. Using our experimental melt compositions and binary mixing modeling, the FeO/MgO trend of the resultant magmas coincides with the range of known Stannern‐trend eucrites when a primary magma is contaminated by crustal partial melts. When experimental major element compositions for eucritic crustal partial melts are combined with trace element concentrations determined by previous modeling (Barrat et al. 2007), the Stannern‐trend can be replicated with respect to both major, minor, and trace element concentrations.

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Hiding in the howardites: Unequilibrated eucrite clasts as a guide to the formation of Vesta's crust

Meteoritics & planetary science

2016

National Meteorite Collection at the Smithsonian were examined for the presence of fine-grained eucrite clasts, with the goal of better understanding the formation of the uppermost crust of asteroid 4Vesta. Eight clasts were identified and characterized in terms of their textures and mineral chemistry, and their degree of thermal metamorphism was assessed. The paucity of fine-grained eucrites, both within the unbrecciated eucrites and as clasts within the howardites, suggests that they originate from small-scale units on the surface of Vesta, most likely derived from partial melting. Six of the eight clasts described were found to be unequilibrated, meaning that they preserve their original crystallization trends. The vast majority of eucrites are at least partially equilibrated, making these samples quite rare and important for deciphering the petrogenesis of the vestan crust. Biomodal grain populations suggest that eucrite melts often began crystallizing pyroxene and plagioclase during their ascent to the surface, where they were subject to more rapid cooling, crystallization, and later metasomatism. Pyroxene compositions from this study and prior work indicate that the products of both primitive and evolved melts were present at the vestan surface after its formation. Two howardite thin sections contained multiple eucrite composition clasts with different crystallization and thermal histories; this mm-scale diversity reflects the complexity of the current day vestan surface that has been observed by Dawn.

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