Panel Discussion: Identity of "'Organized Elements" 611 



For example, people buried in Pompeii in ash from the eruption of Vesuvius 

 apparently have no carbon left, because the tissues have been fully replaced by 

 mineral matter. Nobody doubts that they are remnants of people, yet bio- 

 chemical tests on them would give negative results. 



Berger went on to say that one does not know what happens to meteorites 

 during their passage through the atmosphere. There is a question as to 

 whether air or air-borne pollen is sucked in. He wondered if it might be pos- 

 sible that the pollen could become imbedded in the meteorite and become 

 fossilized during museum storage. He also wondered how long it takes to 

 fossilize organisms. 



Warren Meinschein (Esso Research and Engineering Company, Linden, 

 N. J.) : Meinschein's opinion was that it requires a long time to fossilize organ- 

 isms and it certainly requires water. 



R. Berger: Berger wondered if there was enough water for this to occur in 

 the museum. 



D. J. Hennessy {Department of Chemistry, Fordham University, Xew York, 

 N. Y.) : According to Hennessy, the issue at the present time was whether these 

 "organized elements" were terrestrial or extraterrestrial. Since Orcel in the 

 Paris Museum has large, single pieces of the Orgueil meteorite, perhaps he could 

 be persuaded to permit drilling into one with a sterile drill to obtain a sample 

 from the interior. 



Edward Anders {The Enrico Fermi Institute for Nuclear Studies, University 

 of Chicago, Chicago, III.): Anders suggested that it was utterly misleading to 

 speak of "organized elements" as if they were a single, well-defined family of 

 particles with certain generic properties. Instead, it appeared that the or- 

 ganized elements fell into two sharply distinct classes. Particles of the first 

 class have a striking morphology, and most of them are probably biogenic. 

 However, they are quite rare, even in Nagy's samples, and they have not been 

 seen in the Orgueil samples studied at Chicago. Most of them show a strong 

 resemblance to common airborne contaminants, such as pollen grains, fly ash, 

 etc., and it seems hkely that most of them are in fact terrestrial contaminants. 

 Particles of the second class are probably indigenous to the meteorite. But 

 they seem to lack all other properties suggestive of a biological origin: their 

 morphology is nondescript, and resembles that of mineral grains; they do not 

 take biological stains, or take them atypically; they do not fluoresce in ultra- 

 violet light; they dissolve in acids; and they have nearly the same density as 

 the mineral grains in the meteorite. In view of these findings, Fitch and 

 Anders believed that two questions needed to be settled before all others. For 

 the particles of the first class, what is the evidence that they are not terrestrial 

 contaminants? And for the particles of the second class, what is the evidence 

 that they are not in fact mineral grains? 



[Note added by the discussant in proof. Most of the evidence obtained since 

 the meeting has favored the view that the majority of the organized elements 

 are either contaminants or mineral grains. The spiny Type II elements 

 ("hystrichospherids"), alleged by us to be ragweed pollen grains, have in fact 

 been identified as ragweed pollen by several pollen experts. The Type V ele- 

 ment ("dinoflagellate"), discovered by Claus and Nagy on a Gridley-stained 

 slide of Orgueil was shown to resemble Gridley-stained ragweed pollen (Fitch 



