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Why are lunar meteorites important even though Apollo missions returned Moon rocks?

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Meteorite The Hoba meteorite, lying where it was discovered in 1920 near Grootfontein, Namibia. The largest meteorite on Earth and an iron meteorite by classification, it consists of a nickel-iron alloy and is estimated to weigh about 60 tons.

Lunar meteorites are scientifically significant because they provide information from regions of the Moon that were not visited by the Apollo or Luna missions.12

While the Apollo and Luna missions returned nearly 383 kg of material, these samples were restricted to specific landing sites. In contrast, lunar meteorites—which are fragments blasted off the lunar surface by large impacts—originate from a much wider variety of locations across the Moon. By studying these meteorites, scientists can analyze rock types and geological features from areas that were never directly sampled by spacecraft, offering a more comprehensive understanding of the Moon's formation and evolutionary history.12

The identification of these meteorites as lunar in origin was only possible because of the foundational mineralogical and chemical data provided by the samples returned during the Apollo and Luna missions.12