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Fossil wood, also known as fossilized tree, is wood that is preserved in the fossil record. Over time the wood will usually be the part of a plant that is best preserved (and most easily found). Fossil wood may or may not be petrified, in which case it is known as petrified wood or petrified tree. The study of fossil wood is sometimes called palaeoxylology, with a "palaeoxylologist" somebody who studies fossil wood.
The fossil wood may be the only part of the plant that has been preserved, with the rest of the plant completely unknown:[1] therefore such wood may get a special kind of botanical name. This will usually include "xylon" and a term indicating its presumed (not necessarily certain) affinity, such as Araucarioxylon (wood similar to that of extant Araucaria or some related genus like Agathis or Wollemia), Palmoxylon (wood similar to that of modern Arecaeae), or Castanoxylon (wood similar to that of modern chinkapin or chestnut tree).[2]
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Petrified Wood - 15 million-year-old Petrified Tree
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Petrified wood in the river bed #fossil #rockhound
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Everything About Petrified Wood
Transcription
Hello Young People. Petrified Wood. Out hiking today near Vantage, Washington. In the Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park. There's a petrified tree right there. Still standing! Fifteen and a half million year old tree. It's been standing here for that long. It was petrified underneath a lava flow that was fifteen and a half million years old. The lava flow has been taken away by the Ice Age Floods, and this stubborn tree held its ground. When you come out here and look, it's a desert landscape. We get less than ten inches of rain a year. But when these trees were alive, this was a dense forest. Studying the kinds of wood that's out here - the petrified wood - we know we have a variety of trees that were dominating this area. Those kinds of forests today only survive in places that have fifty inches of rain a year. I'm talking about the forests of southeast United States or eastern Asia. The Ginkgo trees are rare, however. More than 50 per cent of the trees are either Douglas Fir or Spruce. To understand how the petrification process took place to turn these trees to stone, let's take a closer look at some of these logs. We're at the museum at Ginkgo State Park. Got petrified logs laying on the ground here for visitors to enjoy. It's petrified! These are logs made out of stone! And they were pulled right out of basalt lava in the hills. Logs right in the lava. Why didn't the logs just burn up from the heat of the lava? They survived because there was water present. The logs were pulled out of the pillow zone at the base of a lava flow which tells us that water dominated this landscape. The lake water protected the logs from the heat of the lava and there was so much lava that we sealed off those logs from the atmosphere so we didn't rot the logs with oxygen. We had the right ingredients then for petrification - a lot of water, a lot of heat, and minerals. Silica, from the overlying basalt lava. The hot water allowed for transfer of the silica into the wood. Soaked into the wood. And exquisitely preserved the cell structure of these logs. We can then identify the different kinds of wood - the different kinds of trees - based on the patterns of these cell structures. Petrified logs. At Vantage, Washington.
Types
Petrified wood
Petrified wood are fossils of wood that have turned to stone through the process of permineralization.[3] All organic materials are replaced with minerals while maintaining the original structure of the wood.
The most notable example is the petrified forest in Arizona.[4]
Mummified wood
Mummified wood are fossils of wood that have not permineralized.[5] They are formed when trees are buried rapidly in dry cold or hot environments. They are valued in paleobotany because they retain original cells and tissues capable of being examined with the same techniques used with extant plants in dendrology.[6]
Notable examples include the mummified forests in Ellesmere Island[7] and Axel Heiberg Island.[8]
Submerged forests
Submerged forests are remains of trees submerged by marine transgression. They are important in determining sea level rise since the last glacial period.[9]
See also
References
- ^ Ed Strauss (2001). "Petrified Wood from Western Washington". Archived from the original on December 11, 2010. Retrieved April 8, 2011.
- ^ Wilson Nichols Stewart; Gar W. Rothwell (1993). Paleobotany and the evolution of plants (2 ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 31. ISBN 978-0-521-38294-6.
- ^ Bersama, CV Karya (5 June 2023). "Frequently Asked Questions Regarding Petrified Wood". Retrieved 2023-12-11.
- ^ "Petrified Forest National Park". National Park Service, US Department of the Interior. Retrieved April 8, 2011.
- ^ Kelly Greig (January 17, 2011). "Mummified Forest Shows Effect of Changing Climate". Canadian Geographic. Archived from the original on February 5, 2011. Retrieved April 8, 2011.
- ^ Thomas N. Taylor; Edith L. Taylor; Michael Krings (2009). Paleobotany: the biology and evolution of fossil plants. Academic Press. p. 33. ISBN 978-0-12-373972-8.
- ^ Michael D. Lemonick; Courtney Tower; Diane Webster (September 22, 1986). "Science: Unearthing a Frozen Forest". Time. Archived from the original on November 27, 2010. Retrieved April 8, 2011.
- ^ Jeremy Hsu (December 16, 2010). "2-million-year-old 'mummy trees' reveal harsh climate". NBC News. Retrieved April 8, 2011.
- ^ Eric Charles Frederick Bird (2008). Coastal geomorphology: an introduction. John Wiley and Sons. p. 52. ISBN 978-0-470-51729-1.
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This page was last edited on 25 April 2024, at 22:09