The world “petrified” which means stone or rock. Literally, Petrified means “turn to stone” Petrified wood there fore, is wood which appears to have been turned to stone. It is one type of fossil plant. Generally, the age of petrified wood range form about 10,000 -400,000,000 years ago.
How can wood turn to stone
Wood can become stone process call petrifaction Pores and cell space in wood are filled with minerals (Perminalization) and subsequently, the organic cell wall maybe replaced by minerals (replacement) . Naturally, there are two main event that cause wood to be petrified
1. Volcanic activity. The forest or wood was covered or buried by a grate amount of volcanic ash and debris,
2. Flooding. The log we covered with sediment in lake and swamp or material washed in by violent floods, silica dissolved in groundwater infiltrated the buried wood.
The above event created suitable conditions to preserve wood for the petrifaction as follows: temperature, moisture, depth of burial, abundance and kind of minerals, rapidity of chemical activities an anaerobic environment to prevent wood form decay.
Some people wondering how they can know. Whether this is petrified wood or just a rock. Petrified wood that we see nowadays was once a living tree. Although the wood was trued in to stone, the wood some times retains both its external shapes; i.e., grain, burrs, knots, branches, and it internal structure, such as growth rings, vessel, rays, tracheas, which are different in each tree species, as it gradually petrified
Pale botanist identity petrified wood By comparing the anatomical structure fossil wood that has been previously identified. The Scientific name give for petrified wood often use the genus name of pants considered to be it along with the ending “Oxylon” which comes from the Greek word for “wood”
