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South Alabama petrified wood ID please.


Coralhead

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If this topic was posted in the wrong place feel free to pull out the whips and chains.

These are being found at deposit of petrified wood in south Alabama.

Silicification strata sure looks favorable in situ-clay, then 1 foot of wet sand and rounded quartzite, then the wood.

No limb nots, most of it has straight parallel bands like a vascular plant.

Occasionally some samples with annual rings.

Complete logs are rare, most are segments from 5 to 50 pounds.

It seems related to Tallahatta silicified sand(stone).

And it seems to have silicified grey sand in it.

Thanks in advance.

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Edited by Coralhead
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Hi John

I should know in about 10 days when the first batch comes out of the vibe. The road grader had broken up larger pieces into nice tumble size pieces on the county road. Some will certainly polish as it is highly silicified and glass like. Other material is grainy but tough and should do well polishing. And there is plenty that is fairly obviously poorly silicified. Much of it has natural fractures along the grain making lots of small cubes and rectangles that are fracture free exceptional tumbles. 

This will be the first batch to be polished. The gravel road cuts thru the upper section of the ~ 50 foot deep deposit and is lighter colored than the lower damper layer of the deposit. The second photo is a comparison. The darker material was collected from the damp zone. The clay layer above may be volcanic ash based clay that is believed to be in existence throughout south Alabama. Probably washed down from the Morrison formation. This may contribute to the western color scheme.

It is a tough ID. If from a cold era it would likely be conifer or ginkgo family. If from a warm era likely palm/vascular/wood perhaps. There are only a dozen or so palm types in N America yet over 400 fossil palm varieties have been ID'ed in Texas alone so the tropical era had a massive variety of plants.

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  • 2 weeks later...

@Sacha

 

No problem getting a tumble polish.

But careful selection of material is key to polish success.

There is many variations making selection quite a task.

The grey areas seem to be silicified sand(Tallahatta sandstone).

Sand(with mica flakes) must have filled rot cavities before silicification.

I found logs up to 8 feet in diameter and 30 feet long all at +/- 10 feet elevation.

About has to be an early(known) linear ocean shoreline deposit.

Impressive and apparently unknown.

 

 

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