Wood petrified in unknown crystal

[Jared C]

Hi all!

I made one of the the personal coolest discoveries of mine yet - while hunting for petrified wood in tiny, tiny stream on the catahoula formation I found a chip of petrified (palm, most likely) that is completely composed of a translucent mineral, perhaps quartz? I'm curious as to what mineral this piece may have fossilized in. Furthermore, is this a particularly special find? I'm a newbie, so just because it's a first for me doesn't mean it's uncommon. Here are some photos, for reference:

 

and the other side:

 

here it is wet, and held up to the sun. The second photo has my finger behind it so the translucence could be understood

 

Thanks for any help!

[digit]

An interesting piece. I do remember reading about palm pet wood in the Texas area so I'm guessing that is an option. I'm wondering if this thin piece is pet wood itself or a silicate layer that may have formed along side of a piece of pet wood giving it the surface texture but possibly not internal structure of pet wood. I don't ever remember seeing completely glassy translucent pet wood but that is no reason why it should not exist. Thin even layers of cherty material are often veins where silica rich water have deposited within cracks so this too is a possibility that needs to be ruled out.

 

Likely impossible to get good photographs of the micro-structure of this piece but it would be interesting if you could locate a good magnifying lens (I use old photographers loupes which work excellently for this) and see if there is any wood (or palm) structure within this piece. In particular, you'd probably want to look at the cross-section on the broken edge to see if you can see any vascular structure indicative of wood grain. If it is simply clear and glassy then I'd suspect that would favor it being a silica-rich vein that has popped out of its matrix. The appearance of any micro structure would lend credence to really interestingly preserved wood/palm.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[JohnJ]

A very cool piece.  It does not exhibit any of the definitive characteristics of palmwood.  I think this is a layer of chalcedony that can often be found in Texas fossil wood.

[Jared C]

On 1/7/2021 at 2:26 PM, JohnJ said:

I think this is a layer of chalcedony that can often be found in Texas fossil wood.

Thanks! I think so as well after taking a closer look, it doesn't seem to exhibit any internal grain at the sides

[hemipristis]

On 1/8/2021 at 6:26 AM, JohnJ said:

A very cool piece.  It does not exhibit any of the definitive characteristics of palmwood.  I think this is a layer of chalcedony that can often be found in Texas fossil wood.

Concur.

 

I have slivers of similar material from AZ and DE.