Tektite: An excellent example of an Indochinite tektite from Southeast Asia. Tektites are fragments of ejecta produced when a large extraterrestrial object strikes the Earth. The heat of the impact flash melts rock in the impact area and ejects it in the molten state. These molten masses solidify into a natural glass, a mineraloid, in flight and fall to Earth in the area around the impact. The impact that produced the tektites of the Indochina strewn field occurred about 800,000 years ago.

This 48.7-gram specimen is 48 mm x 35 mm x 21 mm in size. The shiny, glassy surface is natural, and similar in appearance to obsidian, which is a terrestrial igneous rock. Note the small crater-like features on the surface of this specimen, which are reminiscent of regmaglypts found on meteorites.