How to Know if You Found Petrified Wood

Sometimes if yous are out hiking, if you are lucky, you will stumble across a gemstone which feels similar rock, but looks like woods. This is petrified forest.

In that location are many different types of petrified wood, but before you lot tin can identify them, it is important to understand a picayune more than about petrified woods itself.

"Wait," y'all may be thinking, "How can forest be a gemstone?"

What is Petrified Wood?

Petrified wood tabular array – Image credit to Deidre Woollard – CC BY two.0

The caption is that petrified woods is a fossil. That ways that it started out as wood, but over millions of years, that organic material was replaced by minerals.

Unremarkably this doesn't happen, considering microorganisms and oxygen take their toll on expressionless wood, breaking information technology downwards. Simply when the wood gets buried, it isn't exposed to oxygen or the action of those microorganisms. That is the wood which gets fossilized.

Petrified forest can be spectacular to behold, because it generally retains the cellular structure of the original wood. So you can run into that same beautiful wood grain, but it has been preserved and rendered every bit stone. All kinds of minerals tin be involved in this transformation, so you lot can encounter a dazzling assortment of colors and textures in a unmarried fossil.

While chances are you haven't found a whole lot of petrified forest just lying around on the ground, it is quite mutual. Typically, it is plant in deposits of sedimentary or volcanic rock. If you happen to exist living in the US, you tin observe petrified wood at locations like the Petrified Wood National Park in Holbrook, AZ, or the Ginkgo Petrified Forest in Washington.

How Many Types of Petrified Wood are There?

You tin classify "types" of petrified woods in a couple of ways. You can place the type of wood which was fossilized in the beginning identify. Or you tin identify the minerals which take taken over the structure of the forest.

According to the National Park Service, at that place are well-nigh a dozen different types of petrified trees in the Petrified Forest in Arizona, and probable nonetheless more than species of petrified trees located on the site that researchers have non nevertheless identified. The copse establish in the park include ginkgoes, tree ferns, and coniferous species.

Petrified Woods National Park – Image credit to Park Ranger – CC BY two.0

Many of these species are related to modern species of trees, but remember, these are prehistoric specimens. So if you find a piece of petrified ginkgo, information technology can be identified every bit an ancestral relative of modern ginkgo, but information technology will not be exactly the aforementioned. You lot may also detect petrified examples of trees like redwoods which take been around since prehistoric times.

Modern copse can be petrified, and someday, rock hunters volition probably find fossilized examples of all the familiar copse we live among. Interestingly enough, scientists take managed to artificially induce the fossilization procedure in a laboratory using an acid-leaching method.

This process remarkably took just days, simply in nature, the fossilization of forest takes millions of years. In short, any type of wood can be petrified. But what you find in nature while rock hunting will be prehistoric.

Identifying Types of Petrified Wood

Polished petrified forest closeup – click to overstate – Image credit to Petrified Forest – CC By 2.0

The all-time mode to effigy out what type of petrified wood you are looking at is to examine the jail cell structure. Unfortunately the cell structure is oftentimes destroyed, just in cases where it is preserved, you have a shot at determining the original species.

To do this, you lot will probably need a microscope. Using magnification of 10x-800x, you volition be able to examine the cells. If you get a nautical chart of prison cell structures, yous can cross-reference and make an educated guess. If for case you see a construction that resembles corn, you are likely looking at gingko. If you see straight rows of round cells, you could be examining a petrified conifer.

You tin can also look at the rays. These are the spokes of cells which run from the middle of the tree torso out beyond the radius to the edge. Rays are yet another hint, since there is quite a bit of variation from i type of tree to the next.

If you see rays that are dissimilar widths, you could be looking at a tree which bore fruit. If you see lots of narrow rays that are the aforementioned width, it could exist a pino tree. Pine trees also may have larger "cells" which are actually resin ducts—another giveaway.

Minerals Normally Making Up Petrified Wood

Usually, silicate minerals supercede the wood in these fossils. Quartz is a mutual example. Considering quartz has a strong cleavage, information technology is easy for it to split quite evenly. This is why when yous are walking through a petrified wood, you lot volition see a lot of fossilized logs which look equally if someone has grabbed an axe and simply carve up them downwards the middle. This is a puzzling sight to many stone hunters and sightseers. In reality, this is a natural interruption in the quartz.

Other types of minerals may as well exist present in petrified wood. You lot might find petrified forest with calcite or pyrite, for example, or even opal (which is typically a mineraloid, since it contains a large corporeality of water content and a non-crystalline structure).

What Gives Petrified Forest Its Color?

You lot may be tempted to effort to place species of trees or minerals on the basis of color, but the huge range of hues found in petrified wood are usually the result of the presence of trace elements. Here is a quick guide:

• Blackness usually indicates the presence of carbon.
• Green or bluish shades usually come from cobalt, copper or chromium.
• Blackish and yellow colors may exist the result of manganese oxides.
• Pink or orangish consequence from manganese.
• Carmine, brown, and yellowish shades are contributed by atomic number 26 oxides.

So when y'all run across those colors, you know what trace elements are present with the minerals. Simply caution: colors alone exercise not necessarily reveal the minerals or the original type of wood. That having been said, sometimes those factors are responsible. I have seen pieces of polished, petrified redwood which shared the verbal same colour every bit living redwood.

While the colors of petrified wood ordinarily evidence upwards beautifully even with rough specimens in their natural grade, you can really get them to emerge by polishing the rock. Y'all will find many tumbled and polished specimens for just this reason—plus those work beautifully in jewelry.

Merely every bit the natural shape of the wood is part of the appeal for many people, petrified wood is often left in its natural form, simply but polished across the tiptop. This preserves the shape and brings out the colors.

Polished petrified wood sinks – Image credit to Indo Gemstone – CC By 2.0

What is Jet?

1 more type of petrified woods—sort of—is a gemstone chosen jet. Jet is a beautiful black stone which is lightweight and easy to carve into all sorts of amazing shapes. Jet has been made into jewelry since the Bronze Historic period, and reached the height of its popularity during Victorian times. When Queen Victoria's hubby died, she started wearing jet while she was in mourning, and the populace imitated her.

Why is jet "sort of" a form of petrified forest? Usually it is described as existence a type of fossilized forest, but the procedure of germination is unique. Unlike other types of petrified forest, jet does non have the original shape and structure of the preserved wood. Jet does start the same way, with dead wood buried underground. Simply over millions of years, jet undergoes a unlike process where it is heated and compressed. This actually results in a course of super-meaty lignite coal.

Sometimes you volition hear jet referred to as "black amber." This is even more of a misnomer than calling it petrified wood, which at to the lowest degree has some accuracy. Jet has nothing to do with amber.

Now you should accept a pretty adept starting point if you want to place a piece of petrified wood. Past examining its cellular structure, which has been preserved over a catamenia of millions of years, you can identify what type of prehistoric tree it originated as. You tin also identify the minerals and trace elements that replaced the organic matter. You lot now also know what jet is, and how it is both related to and different from other forms of petrified woods.

Resources:

• http://phys.org/news/2005-01-petrified-wood-days.html
• http://www.evolvingearth.org/learnearthscience/sciencearticles0809identifypetrifiedwood.htm
• http://www.ehow.com/info_8150213_identify-types-petrified-woods.html
• http://www.nps.gov/pefo/faqs.htm
• http://geology.com/stories/13/petrified-wood/
• http://www.petrifiedwood.org.uk/how-long-does-information technology-take-for-wood-to-go-petrified.html
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrified_wood
• http://world wide web.bwsmigel.info/GEOL.115.ESSAYS/Gemology.Jet.html

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Source: http://www.gemcoach.com/types-of-petrified-wood/

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