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What evidence suggests that meteorites were once part of larger bodies broken up by impacts?a. All meteorites have irregular shapes and came from the asteroid belt where all objects are spherical; this means that asteroids split before their fragments fall on the Earth's surface.b. Crystals in iron meteorites show that they cooled very slowly; this low cooling rate is consistent with existence in bodies much larger than the meteorites' size. Stony and iron meteorites resulted when these bodies melted and differentiated into metal cores at their centers with stone on top, and then were later fragmented.c. The mass and size of typical meteorite falls are much smaller than for average objects in the asteroid belt, therefore asteroids must fragment.d. Many collisions in the asteroid belt are observed each year through Earth-based and orbital telescopes, therefore asteroids are constantly splitting to pieces and may be fragments of a Terrestrial-type planet formed and destroyed at early stages of the Solar System.

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