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We dispute the claim by Alexeev (2010) that the numerous fossil meteorites found in mid-Ordovician sediments in southern Sweden can be explained by a single large meteorite shower some 470 million years ago, and-in particular-that the reported variable cosmic ray exposure ages derived from cosmogenic Ne in chromite grains extracted from the fossil meteorites actually reflect variable contributions of nucleogenic Ne instead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the analysis of data in [1, 2] on the concentrations of noble gases and the cosmic ray exposure age (CREA) of chromite grains in fossil meteorites, it was demonstrated in [3] that the distributions of gas concentrations and cosmic ray exposure ages can be explained under the assumption of the fall of a single meteorite in the form of a meteorite shower in southern Sweden less than 0.2 Ma after the catastrophic destruction of the parental body (asteroid) of L chondrites in space at approximately 470 Ma. This assumption differs from the conclusion in [1, 2, 4] about the long-lasting (for 1-2 Ma) delivery of L chondrites to the Earth, with the intensity of the flux of this material one to two orders of magnitude greater than now. The analysis of newly obtained data on samples from the Brunflo fossil meteorite [5] corroborates the hypothesis of a meteorite shower produced by the fall of a single meteorite. The possible reason for the detected correlations between the cosmic ray exposure ages of meteorites and the masses of the samples with the Ne concentrations can be the occurrence of Ne of anomalous isotopic composition in the meteorites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the analysis of the data acquired for the chromite grains recovered from fossil meteorites from Sweden (Heck et al., 2004, 2008), the dependence of the exposure age of meteorites on a mass of the examined samples was obtained (Alexeev, 2010). This dependence, whatever its nature, puts into question the validity of the conclusion on a long lasting (over the course of 1-2 Myr) and substantial (by 1-2 orders of magnitude) increase in the intensity of the flux of meteorites (L-chondrites) that fell onto the Earth about 470 Myr ago. All of the fossil meteorites found in southern Sweden could be the fragments of a single meteorite that fell as a meteorite shower in the Thorsberg quarry region ∼470 Myr ago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the results of the analysis of the data obtained by Heck et al. (2004; 2008) regarding the contents of He and Ne and the exposure age of chromite grains recovered from fossil meteorites (L-chondrites) found in marine limestone—mid-Ordovician sediments—in the Thorsberg and Gullhogen quarries of southern Sweden. It has been shown that the increase of the content of noble gases in the chromite grains (by 1–2 orders of magnitude) and their exposure age with a decreasing mass of the samples (by approximately an order of magnitude) can be caused by an increase of the portion of small grains and by their poor preservation in the samples of small mass. The revealed relationships, as well as the fact that practically all fossil meteorites were found in a small area (∼6000 m), can be explained by the following assumption: a meteorite shower, caused by a single meteorite, fell ∼470 Myr; this occurred less than 0.2 Myr after the catastrophic destruction of the L-chondrite parent body. The time of this fall corresponds to that of the formation of the oldest sedimentation stratum, containing the meteorite fragments, in the Thorsberg quarry. Meteorite fragments in the younger strata are most likely the result of the subsequent redeposition that occurred in a shallow sea, when the sediment mass was forming. In this case, to explain the distribution of fossil meteorites in the mid-Ordovician sediments in Sweden, there is no necessity to hypothesize that an intense flux of meteorites was falling onto the Earth over the course of ∼1–2 Myr about 470 million years ago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]