Olivine has been identified in a large number of stony and stony-iron meteorites. These meteorites are thought to have originated from the mantle of a rocky planet that used to occupy an orbit between Mars and Jupiter – or they might be from an asteroid that was large enough to have developed a differentiated internal structure consisting of a rock mantle and a metallic core.

Pallasites are thought to represent the part of an asteroid or planet that was near the mantle-core boundary where rocky materials of the mantle were mixed with the metallic materials of the core. Pallasites typically have distinct crystals of olivine (usually fayalite) surrounded by a nickel-iron matrix. A photograph of a slice from a pallasite meteorite is shown on this page.