NEW YORK (Reuters) - A piece of a meteorite from Mars sold on Sunday for $4,600, more than a thousand times the value of its weight in gold, Phillips auction house said. "This is a new world record for a piece of Mars," said Darrell Pitt, one of the auction house`s natural history specialists. The meteorite, called Governador Valadares, was found in Brazil in 1958 and was described by the Smithsonian Institute last year as the "least understood of the Martian meteorites," according to the Phillips catalogue for the one-day sale. "It sold for 1,600 times the current price of gold," said Pitt. The piece weighs 0.28 grams and measures 2 x 2 x 4 mm. Of the 20,000 meteorites found so far, only 12 are from Mars. The price for the fragment, which contains a spectacular mosaic of hundreds of sparkling olivine crystals, was sold to a major museum in the United States. "I am personally thrilled and delighted that this scientifically important specimen is going to a museum because it belongs in a museum," said Pitt, who declined to identify the buyer. The auction house said Sunday`s sale of 240 items brought in a total of more than $500,000. Bidding was taken in person, and by telephone and fax.