Fossil wood yields a spectacular surprise!

[Doctor Mud]

I was hunting a Miocene site in New Zealand when my friend cried out “wow! Wow!….wow!” From a few meters away. Well I thought that’s three wows, this must be something pretty good. 
 

She had found the biggest piece of petrified wood I’d ever seen at this site. Pretty good! Not too common as this is outer shelf sediment. 
 

We looked around and I found another piece - comparison showed that they fit together…..ok that ups the ante a bit.

the whole thing is now about 50cm long

 

 

well I set the pieces aside and kept looking and mulling over whether to keep this specimen. It’s big, and there’s a big hike out. Maybe I’m better off collecting a photo instead? 
 

The time came to decide and I picked up a piece to have closer look…..hang on - that’s a big fish vert in there!

 

 

You can also see bones and scales poking out the sides. How did we miss this? We were blinded by the excitement of find the massive chunk of wood. 

My guesstimate of what’s going on below. 
 

 

X-rays confirmed we have an almost complete fish in there. But the piece with the skull in was too thick and dense for X-rays to penetrate. But you can see skull bones protruding out the front

 

 

You can see the verts running the length of concretion in this image of the second (left hand) block

 

 

so probably missing the tail? 
 

What an interesting association. I tell you though, it was one tricky job stabilizing that wood! It’s poorly mineralised.