A Kiowa County man said he may have found what could be one of the largest meteorites ever reported.

Don Stimpson said he and Paul Ross were searching Ross' field recently with a giant metal detector when the device made so much noise they thought they'd found an old culvert. Instead, they began digging up pieces of meteorite. "We dug and dug and brought up a 250-pound meteorite," said Stimpson, who had thought the field had been cleared of meteorites. "And then we looked, and there was another one there. We dug it out and...well, wait a minute, there is more. We brought 1,500 pounds of meteorite from that one hole."

Experts said the find may be part of the Brenham meteorites, a collection of space rocks that fell to Earth in the present-day Brenham Township near Haviland about 20,000 years ago.

Many are among the most famous and sought-after in the world because they are pallasites. The extremely rare rocks contain crystals that look like stained glass when they are cut.

Wichita State University physics professor David Alexander, whose specialty is astronomy, said that if the pieces Stimpson and Ross found are from one meteorite, it would be the largest pallasite ever found.

Professional meteorite hunter Steve Arnold found the current record-holder, a 1,400-pound pallasite, about two miles southeast of Ross' land last fall.

Stimpson said he's still excavating the crater, which he said is covered in a thick layer of rust about 20 feet in diameter. "We do not know how far it extends," he said. "I'll keep working on the site as long as I can and submit a scientific paper with my data when we are finished."

Meanwhile, the public can get a glimpse Saturday at what Stimpson and Ross found during Haviland's annual meteorite festival.