The largest fragment was recovered in an area where the landscape consists of "flowing" gravel or clay-like sediments on permafrost.

Excavations of a medieval Norse farm in the modern day Nuuk area in 1976 revealed an arrowhead made of iron from the meteorite.

[14] Other pieces of Cape York meteoritic iron dating prior to 1450 (i.e. before the Little Ice Age) have been found throughout the Arctic Archipelago and on the North American mainland, and are evidence of an extensive Thule culture trade network[15] which supplied iron to First Nations peoples prior to European contact.

The Inuit loosely described the location of this iron as Sowallick (probably this refers to Savilik which in Greenlandic means ‘with knife’), but poor weather and sea ice prevented Ross from investigating further.

[17] Between 1818 and 1883, several further expeditions to the area were mounted by Britain, Sweden, and Denmark, which all failed to find the source of the meteoritic iron.

In 1870, Nordenskiöld located the main source of this iron at Ovifak (Uivfaq) on the south coast of Disko Island.

Peary dedicated three years to planning and executing the removal of the meteorite, a process which required, among other things, the construction of a short "railroad" of heavy timbers.

[21] During his expedition to retrieve the meteorite, Peary convinced six Inughuit Greenlandic Inuit people ("three men, one woman, a boy, and a girl"), including Minik Wallace, to travel with him in the United States for study at the American Museum of Natural History, where four died within a few months.

The removal of meteorites from Greenland did not have a great impact on the lives of local residents because by that time they were getting iron for their needs from whalers, Peary and later from Thule trading post.

Due to World War I it was left at the scene of its discovery until 1923-24 when the mass was brought down from the top of the cliff to the seashore and transported across 25 km of sea ice to the Bushnan Island.

The meteorite has the shape and size of a resting goose, measuring 35 x 30 x 20 cm in the greatest dimensions and weighing 48.6 kg.

[27] In 1963, a fifth major piece of the Cape York meteorite was discovered by Vagn Buchwald [da; de] on Agpalilik peninsula.

[29] Surveys of the area with a magnetometer in 2012 and georadar in 2014 found no evidence of further large iron fragments on Meteorite island, either buried or on the surface.