On the Monte Bondonein the Garniga Vecchia area, in Trentino, the story started from a very concrete nuisance: a car key disappeared during a mushroom outing, in a secluded stretch, and the need to get back to it before it got dark or yet another day ended with a call to the tow truck. Efrem Rigotti he was there, in October 2021, when with the help of a friend and a metal detector he came across a rock fragment that made the device ring and which, at first glance, had little to do with the local dolomite. Sometimes scientific discoveries enter the scene like this, without fanfare, with the crooked step of common things.
Rigotti took that stone home. He even tried to cut it, without success, and after a few years he decided to show it to those who could really understand its nature. The sample arrived at the Italian Museum of Planetary Sciences in 2024. From there, an analysis work began, conducted together with the University of Camerino, with a prudence that in these cases weighs as much as the discovery itself: no rush forward, no advance announcement, only the time necessary to close the studies and wait for the approval of the Nomenclature Committee of the Meteoritical Society. Marco Morelli explained that in twenty years hundreds of samples had arrived at the museum for evaluation and none had ever turned out to be a meteorite. This, however, yes.
The official announcement arrived between March and April 2026. The international profile of the Monte Bondone meteorite registers it as an approved official name on March 10, 2026; the public presentation arrived on April 10th in Garniga Terme. The analyzes consolidated the classification and confirmed the essential data: 188.2 grams mass, only one fragment found, year of discovery 2021. The striking detail is right here: for almost five years that stone remained suspended between suspicion and certainty, until science gave it a full name and an identity card.
Inside those 188.2 grams is a piece of the asteroid belt
There ordinary chondrite L5 found on Bondone it measures approximately 5 by 8 centimetres, has a color ranging from dark gray to lighter grey, shows only a small trace of fusion crust and on the surface it clearly shows some chondrules, i.e. tiny spherical structures typical of these rocky meteorites. In simple words, it is a primitive find coming from the asteroid belt, a material that has preserved a composition very close to that of the early evolutionary phases of the Solar System. Inside that fragment there is matter that tells of an era from beyond 4 and a half billion years agowhen the Earth was also still taking shape.
The scientific weight of the discovery also lies in its geographical rarity. During the presentation it was recalled that in Italy there are 44 meteorites that have fallen or been found, analyzed and officially recognized by the scientific community, and that of Bondone is the never found before in Trentino; there was one in Alto Adige in 2016. Translated into less solemn terms: that forest took a place on the Italian map of meteorites and did so with a small, compact, almost anonymous fragment, which until a few years ago just looked like a strange stone.
The most fictional part of the story remains open, the one that science observes with prudence and the territory willingly retains in its memory. Rigotti said that he heard, years ago, the story of a person who has now passed away who apparently saw two fireballs fall a short distance from each other on Monte Bondone. The meteorite could therefore have arrived there even decades ago. The exact date of its arrival is missing, but its origin from the asteroid belt is a fixed point. In the coming months the Municipality of Garniga Terme, together with the MUSE of Trento, has announced information initiatives to enhance the find.
