By Ron Wilson, Director of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University.

Look, up in the sky. It's a bird. It's a plane. No, it's....a meteorite. With apologies to Superman, there are a number of genuine meteorites from outer space that have landed in our state. Recently, a meteorite hunter found the largest pallasite meteorite ever found in North America, and it was located in rural Kansas.

This is the second and final edition of our two-part series on the community of Haviland, located in Kiowa County in south central Kansas.

Experts say that one or two thousand years ago, a truck-sized piece of asteroid called the Brenham meteorite exploded over the Kansas prairie, scattering more than three tons of fragments. Most of the remaining fragments are no bigger than a grapefruit. The impact area is called the Brenham meteorite field. 

For decades, meteorite hunters have searched for these fragments of space rocks.  Sometime during the 1920s or 1930s, one such hunter was examining a Kansas field with a low place which was thought to be a buffalo wallow. He found that it was actually an impact crater from a piece of meteorite.

In 1949, a collector named H.O. Stockwell discovered a 1,000 pound meteorite in the Brenham field. That one is on display at the Big Well in Greensburg, Kansas.

In fall 2005, Steve Arnold was also exploring the Brenham field. Steve is a native Kansan and modern-day meteorite hunter, now living in Arkansas. He uses metal detectors because of the heavy iron in those meteorites.

Steve was exploring the farm of Allen Binford south of Haviland – the very same field where Stockwell found the 1,000 pound meteorite more than a half century ago. Steve scanned the field and found a likely spot. He brought in a backhoe to excavate the site and then also used hand tools to be very careful as he dug. He and and Dan Woods, the backhoe operator, dug down and found – an old iron wagon wheel. What a disappointment.

But Steve Arnold didn't give up. On October 16, two weeks later, after a metal detector search, he brought the backhoe in again. And this time, he hit paydirt, so to speak. Careful digging revealed a large meteorite. Steve dug around the edge and attached lifting straps to it, but it was too heavy. Woods repositioned the backhoe and lifted again with better results. After 2,000 years of being trapped in the soil, the rock was once again airborne.

And there it was: The meteorite weighed 1,430 pounds, making it the largest pallasite meteorite ever found in North America and the largest oriented meteorite in the world. Wow.

A pallasite is a rare form of heavy metallic meteorite. Pallasites are composed of 50 percent nickel and iron alloy and 50 percent of Olivine crystals.

So what is an oriented meteorite? I thought it was a meteorite that was not lost. But the experts say an oriented meteorite is one that did not tumble as it entered the atmosphere. Most meteorites tumble through the earth's atmosphere and have their rough edges rounded off in the process. This meteorite did not tumble, which left it rounded on one side and jagged on the other.

Oriented meteorites are said to be the rarest and most coveted type of meteorites. In fact, this one may be worth more than a million dollars.

This find has been featured on the NBC "Today" show, Discovery Channel, Weather Channel, ABC, CBS, MSNBC.com, and more than100 newspapers around the world. Stories about the find have appeared as far away as England, Germany, India, and Australia, telling about this historic meteorite found near Haviland, Kansas, population 590 people. Now, that's rural.

How exciting that this historic happening would take place in rural Kansas.

Look, up in the sky. It's a bird. It's a plane. No, it's....a meteorite, maybe a couple thousand years ago. We salute Steve Arnold, Allen Binford, and all those who are involved with this historic find, and we commend the people of Haviland for making a difference with their efforts to revitalize their community. Those efforts are not just super, they are out of this world.

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The mission of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development is to enhance rural development by helping rural people help themselves. The Kansas Profile radio series and columns are produced with assistance from the K-State Research and Extension Department of Communications News Unit. Audio and text files of Kansas Profiles are available at http://www.kansasprofile.com. For more information about the Huck Boyd Institute, interested persons can visit http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/huckboyd/.