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I found an odd piece of rock when my apartment has it's second floor garden soil removed. My neighbor said that it looks like petrified wood but I just want to make sure. Thanks.

Looking to have growths id present on late cretaceous wood. The growths are the scales present on the wood. They appear to have been growing between wood layers. Wood is partly carbonized and not fully mineralized. Wood was drift wood mixed in with baculites and scaphites. Fossil taken in situ from upper part of Kevin mb of Marias Fm in Montana.

Me and my brother were walking near a waterfall, when we both found this. I thought it was just a rock, but it has a very strange visible structure that makes me suspect it is a fossil, maybe its petrified wood encased in sandstone, but I am not sure. I am attaching 3 pictures of it. In the second picture, you see why I think it is petrified wood. In the other two, you see the structure of the rock I was talking about. What do you guys think? Jared

Friends, I seem to collect lots of petrified wood in my nearly-every-weekend outings into the oil patch in the county where I live. Much of what is found are small little bits and pieces and a whole lot of it is really pretty. Some I will try to identify and those may earn their own topic entry, however, others are just nice little pieces that I cut up on my saw and will post the photographs here for y'all to look at. They are just too pretty to not share, you know? All those entered under this topic will be found near my home unless otherwise notated. Some of the petrified wood will have been found by a buddy of mine whose rock I cut up for him from time to time, and those will also be notated here. If no one minds, I probably won't put a scale on the specimens since all of them will be no longer than 4 1/2" on their longest side since that is as wide as my little rock saw can handle. As usual, feel free to comment. Some of this stuff might really challenge your ability to readily recognize what is or what isn't petrified wood.

My first find in a while. Been crazy because I am preparing to move to a new house. Here is how I found it. I was looking at a house with my mother. We were talking to the land owner about the house, when I saw a rock. Immediately my mind said, "petrified wood." I went over and looked at it. I was right. Petrified wood. I spoke to the land owner and said that he had petrified wood on his property. Without me asking to take it, he said that I could have it! SCORE!!!! Well, thats one way to find petrified wood! Jared

Some petrified wood found in northwestern New Mexico, San Juan Basin, Upper Cretaceous, Kirtland Formation a couple of weeks ago. The cut slabs are from a log about 6-inches in diameter and my best guess is conifer only because most everything else in that area turns out to be conifer, specifically, Cupressinoxylon sp. Any other opinion about species would be welcome. There are several nice agate bands running through the length of the log and are clearly visible here. The first slab is dry and the second is wet.

I've just started getting interested in fossils and started collecting ones I've found. I recently found what to me looks like petrified wood in a bag of pea gravel I got from Home Depot. Is this petrified wood? I've attached a picture of each side of the piece for help with identification. Thank you for the help!

Is this amber on this piece of petrified wood?

I hope I am posting in the right topic...you know I am blond..lol and old...lol I picked this up in MS years ago on a rock hunt central MS maybe Big Black River close to Natchez. I was always wondering what kind of wood and just how it seemed was cut with something sharp before it petrified. I am interested in your thoughts on this piece. Thank you all so much!! Your great at helping us amateurs!! Brought more inside and cleaning to show later. Deb

Hi everyone, A few months back I bought this piece of Petrified Wood from the pet store where I work, seems like you can find fossils at the most unlikely places. It's a piece of petrified wood that's often sold in petstores as a aquarium ornament, I've seen them in plenty other stores as well as in pretty much every online store that sells aquarium supplies. All the pieces I've seen in stores and in webshops seems to be preserved in the same way, so I guess they are all found in the same location. But obviously I don't know the location, age or ID of this specimen. I know you can't ID fossil wood without a location, but I did some research and since this type of petrified wood is sold all over the world in petshops for use in aquaria maybe someone here knows where exactly? The wood is also preserved as quartz My research also found that some shop sell them as Burmese Petrified Wood, not sure whether it is really where it comes from, but it might be a start? So I am really hoping if anyone could help me figure out the location or age of this petrified wood, species ID would be cool too but the age is what I am most curious about. Thanks in advance!

There was a piece of land sticking out between valleys of about 2000+ sq meters. I found there many various fossils. On that ridge sticking out, there was a rocky bed floor split in 2 or more & were cracked as an earthquake would do. Between them, I found this piece along with another not far inside the crack. I had to be creative to pull them. The matrix below is woody and lightweight and can be broken. On top, is a solid rock and very petrified "something" & sticking together as 1 matrix.

Super heavy and deep red showing. Just cleaned from dirt, found as-is on 1400 meters above sea level in the anti mount lebanon range (mid to northern part). a local stone/sand producers operated a cut on a 90 meters hill to extract construction stones or sand, exposed fossils among the left debris. I am just wondering if this can be amber baring? especially on those outer part showing. I did not attempt or tried to know. But the outer layer can easily be scratched

This looks like petrified wood to me but I've had no success looking online to see how to determine if my hunch is real or not. I'd appreciate any help or suggestions about whether or not this is petrified wood. (Item is wet in the pictures) Thanks!

Hello, I had a brilliant Idea and I wanted to share it with you guys. Here is the rundown: I have a good friend, (not a girlfriend,) in Utah. I want to make something for her for the holidays. I decided to try to make a necklace for her with a piece of Petrified Wood as a pendant. Attached is a picture of the piece I am using. I thought about using one of my Gastropods as the pendant, but I passed because I only have 2 Gastropod fossils. My smallest fossil fish are too big for a necklace. Well, that is my gift idea. I just wanted to share it. What do you guys think? Jared

I moved up to South Hills, a suburb of Charleston, a few years ago and started hunting for fossils in the nearby creeks. The Charleston area is generally not great fossil territory, but I struck gold in Lick Branch. The creek is chock full of sandstone-replaced coal plants, mainly Stigmaria and Lepidodendron. I have pulled about 40 specimens out, the best one being the Stigmaria shown below.

Found in pacific city Oregon. My daughter found this on the beach and thought it was a cool fossil rock. After getting it home I noticed the rings and I am fairly certain it is petrified wood but what are the holes? Some are hard packed with sand (rock hard, cant break it up) and others have crystals in them. This area is well known for agate, not sure if that has anything to do with it. Very unique, if it is truly petrified wood I have never seen any like this.

Found this near Sealy on the Brazos River. Any ideas what this could be? Fossilized pine cone or shoot of a palm tree? Or just petrified wood shaped by the river?

Dinosaur Park in Laurel, MD, is a tiny, 7.5-acre tract of county parkland surrounded by a business park in bustling, suburban Maryland. Nevertheless, it is the most prolific dinosaur and plant site east of the Mississippi. The first fossils there were found in the 18th century by slaves in the siderite (bog iron ore) mine that was there at the time. It wasn’t until 1858 that the bones turning up in the mine were identified as dinosaur remains. The bones found that year were from what would have been, if they a had done all the paperwork, the second dinosaur identified in the US, Astrodon johnstoni, which is now Maryland’s State Dinosaur[1] . Since then dinosaurs, turtles, small mammals, crocodilians, gastropods, clams, and tons of fossil plant material have been found there, all of it now at the Smithsonian. The site is part of the Arundel Formation, dating to the Lower Cretaceous, 115 mya, when the place was an oxbow lake. Tributaries were strong enough to wash dino bones into the lake. The fossils there are disarticulated wash-out. Whole skeletons are not generally found or expected here. The exposed hillside consists of a mix of fine grey soil, siderite bog iron and lignite (coalified fossil wood the consistency of charcoal). The lignite and siderite form a thin, dense gravel layer. The challenge for visitors and paleontology volunteers alike is to find the pale blue bones and shiny teeth in the cacophony of black and orange. Collection is done almost exclusively by surface scanning. If something large turns up by way of erosion, then they cordon it off and dig it out. Anything other than the wood is documented with the finder’s name and sent to the Smithsonian. Visitors may keep one palm-sized piece of fossil wood if they like. My husband and I met a friend and her two daughters there today. It was cold, but sunny. There were harsh shadows on the ground, which are supposed to make it easier to pick out shiny teeth. I find the contrast too harsh to see details. The park is open from noon to 4 every other Saturday. We got there close to 1 and spent a couple hours there, despite the chill in the air. I didn’t expect to find any exciting fauna. That’s usually our daughter’s job, and she was at work. I was engrossed in the lignite and the siderite plant impressions, hoping maybe to find a seed cone or two for their collection. Apparently, a handful in a day is not unusual there. I had no luck on either score. I did find a nice plant impression in the siderite. Looks like tree bark. I asked if that could be the one I took home. The volunteer looked at me sternly and asked, "Do you now what it is?" "Tree bark impression in siderite, but I don't know from which tree." “What do you do for a living?” “Artist.” “What do you do that will prove to me that this will be used for educational or scientific purposes?” I told him about my fossil blog and the homeschool paleontology series I just ran at my local library. He was convinced. Now I have it at home, but I may offer it to the Delaware Museum of Natural History, where I volunteer. Each of the girls also found something nice, albeit smaller, to bring home. Unsurprisingly, most of the other kids were disappointed because they didn’t find dinosaur teeth. There was a list at the registration table of maybe a dozen interesting things found today. As far as I know, no one found anything interesting while we were there. Some days go like that, but I was not disappointed. It was a good afternoon to see someplace new. [1] Maryland has both a State Dinosaur and a State Fossil. The State Fossil is a gastropod, Ecphora gardenera.

L.S., Recently I was involved in a study on the growth of native copper porphyroblasts in a sample of mine prop wood from a Bronze Age copper mine on Cyprus. While the paper approaches the subject from a mineralogical/structural geological rather than a paleontological point of view, it might still be of interest to some of you. For a limited period of time, the paper can be downloaded freely via the following link: https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1a0ShhdGqSQ49 The work describes how the formation of copper porphyroblasts in the mine prop wood has locally deformed the tracheid microstructure. This is significant, because the deformation suggests that the native copper formation involved so-called 'displacive growth'. Simply put, the copper crystals must have exerted mechanical force on their environment in order to make room for themselves to grow. This phenomenon is known as the 'force of crystallization' and can be observed under specific laboratory conditions (see e.g. Wolterbeek et al. 2018), but it is generally very difficult to unequivocally prove displacive growth and force of crystallization-driven processes played a role in natural samples. Kind regards, Tim

I am new to the site and fossils. My son (7) is very interested in fossils. We are planning to go to Glen Rose, Texas this spring. However, He is really wanting to search and find petrified wood in the near future. I do not know where to begin. We live in Tyler, TX and want to go somewhere, we will be able to easily see and find petrified wood and fossils. I am a bad amateur and could really use some help in where to take my son. If anyone knows please help me out

I found this is there anyway this is petrified wood.

This is part of my collection I have acquired over the past year new to TFF just wanted to say hello to everyone. Many of other fossils packed away as I build more cases

Hello, new here. I found this off the side of the highway 95 near the Nevada/Oregon state line. I’m thinking it’s petrified wood, but I don’t know enough to be certain. Your help and opinions would be greatly appreciated! It’s pretty heavy and hard, smooth on 5 sides and rougher on one. A strange thing, could just be environmental, the “rough” side of the rock has a strange smell, kinda of like old cooking oil. photos of “sides” attached. I’ll add photos of top bottom and a few others in comments.

So we have yet another unidentified mazon creek fossil. I see two possible specimens here but I’m not convinced either are proper fossils or even what they could be. The larger one looks like wood to me, and the smaller one looks darker and oddly shaped. I first thought maybe a flat worn?

I found this in schuyler county, Missouri about 3 or 4 miles from lancaster a few weeks ago. My grandson would like to take it to school but I felt we needed a bit more information. I am not even positive it IS petrified wood and amber. Whatever it is, I think it's extra pretty!