Pictured above, it is still exactly where it landed 80,000 years ago in what is now Namibia.
The Hoba meteorite weighs about 60 metric tons, part of the reason it remains in situ.
A farmer discovered it in 1920 when his plow struck something hard.
The object turned out to be this flat-topped chunk of iron and nickel about 2.7 meters across and one meter thick — roughly the size and shape of a small car crushed into a pancake.
Scientists estimate it originally weighed around 66 tons before weathering and souvenir hunters chipped away at it.
Unusually for a meteorite of this size, there is no impact crater.
A leading theory is that its flat shape and the Earth's atmosphere combined to slow it significantly before impact.
It may have skipped across the atmosphere like a stone thrown on water before touching down.
The site is now a national monument and visitors can still walk right up to it and touch it.
[via Boing Boing]
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