[Heel n Toe]

Mmmmm... not quite "just a scattering of particles" have been found.

This is the Holsinger Meteorite... a 1400+ lb. piece of the meteor that created "Meteor Crater." It's the largest piece of it that has been found (found in the crater), and it's in the museum adjacent to it... I've seen it and touched it... it's a spooky-lookin' rock. If I remember correctly, it's between 3 and 4 feet long.



"A study published in the journal Science concludes the stone that came in from space that day was a nickel iron meteor 100 feet in diameter and weighing 60,000 tons, traveling at speed of almost 45,000 miles an hour.
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...hundreds, if not thousands of pieces of the meteor, ranging from a few grams to a couple hundred pounds, have been found and picked up from the so-called Canyon Diablo scatter field around the impact site. Up to this time no reliable estimate of the total overall weight found thus far, or for the estimated amount of remaining pieces, has been forthcomimg. Meteorite hunter Dr. Harvey Harlow Nininger, a well-respected student of things-meteor, has estimated that about 30 tons of specimens had been collected. Workers have estimated that 8,000 tons of iron are contained in the fine grained material around the crater. This leaves about 55,000 tons to speculate about. Some of it remains buried as drilling in the crater for the main bolide has shown. Some of it remains in the form of specimens in area surrounding the crater. Until the area was closed to meteorite hunting recently, hunters with metal detectors were still finding significant pieces. However, as stated above by Pierazzo, et al, 85 percent, 51,000 tons, the vast majority of the impacting body creating the crater, vaporized. It instantly turned from a solid nickel and iron rock into a gas, creating a cloud of super heated vapor riding the crest of the 2000 mile per hour winds, only to cool and condense and rain nickel and iron spheroids down upon hundereds of square miles in every direction."
METEOR CRATER METEORITE: What Happened To It?

"The object that excavated the crater was a nickel-iron meteorite about 50 meters (54 yards) across, which impacted the plain at a speed of several kilometers per second. The speed of the impact has been a subject of some debate. Modelling initially suggested that the meteorite struck at a speed of up to 20 kilometers per second (45,000 mph), but more recent research suggests the impact was substantially slower, at 12.8 kilometers per second (28,600 mph). It is believed that about half of the impactor's 300,000 tonnes (330,000 short tons) bulk was vaporized during its descent, before it hit the ground.

The impactor itself was mostly vaporized; very little of the meteorite remained within the pit that it had excavated."
Meteor Crater - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia