The Shadow
In my living room at home, I have a short piece of a petrified log about 10 inches thick that I brought from California to Virginia when I moved to the Alleghany Highlands in 1979.
The petrified wood serves as a conversation piece, and it is heavy for a 24” long portion of a log.
Petrified formations around the world have created much interest in that many look like humans turned to stone, animals in various positions, and birds.
Petrified wood sometimes referred to as petrified trees is created by natural elements that turn wood into a stone-like resemblance of what it once was. The process takes many years of oxygen deprivation as water and sediments penetrate the buried wood, often carried downstream by floods or deposited beneath the earth by volcano eruptions.
The largest petrified tree yet to be discovered was found in northern Thailand. It measured 237’ in length which means that as it stood, it would have towered 330’ above the earth.
The largest terrestrial animal found thus far on Earth is Patagotitan mayorum, the Titanosaur. One femur (thighbone) measured eight feet. The creature was fossilized.
Permineralization is the first step in petrification. It occurs when minerals seep into the cellulose and fill the cells that are being deprived of oxygen that would enable them to decompose.
Over long periods of time, petrification is brought about by the absence of oxygen and elements on Earth that are necessary for decomposition to take place.
Wood buried beneath volcanic ash or dirt saturated with water brings about the penetration of minerals and sediment into the cells of the wood, causing it to harden into stone over a very long period of time because no oxygen is available to bring about its decomposition.
Some parks in the United States where examples of petrification are plentiful are Ginkgo/Wanapum State Park in the state of Washington, Petrified Wood Park in Lemmon, S. D., Petrified Forest in Calif., Mississippi Petrified Forest in Flora and Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona where I once drove through on my way from Calif. to my home in Eastern Kentucky. The park includes the Painted Desert with its petrified logs in plain view.
The largest fossilized bird that has been uncovered is the Archaeopteryx, a dinosaur-like creature that was found in Solnhofen Limestone Upper Jurassic, Germany.
Coal is formed from compressed plants. Although rocks are formed from minerals that are not organic, coal is classified as a sedimentary rock despite the fact that it is formed from organic plant life.
Often, fossils are found embedded in coal, dragonflies for example.
When a fossil organism is replaced by minerals the organism becomes petrified.
Visitors to Arizona can view an 80-ton petrified log that is broken into pieces by traveling to the Geronimo Trading Post in Joseph City.
While petrification does not retain the organism’s body composition, it retains the shape of the organism’s body. Thus, the petrified log in front of my electric heater looks like a grayish log.
