A man has discovered a rare meteorite hidden among a bag of cheap space rocks.
Dave Harris, of St Michael's Road, Portslade, noticed one of the rocks was an unusual type and sent a picture of it to the Natural History Museum.
His meteorite, a carbonaceous chondrite, has now been classified and awarded its own number.
Astronomer Mr Harris, who is the secretary of the British and Irish Meteorite Society found the meteorite after purchasing a kilo of space rocks from a rock fair.
The rocks, which fall from space and survive a fiery journey through the Earth's atmosphere, are gathered from the Sahara Desert in Africa by nomads and sold on to dealers.
Mr Harris' five billion year old meteorite is rare because its composition is different to ordinary chondrites. Carbonaceous chondrites are similar in composition to the sun.
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