Allan Hills Petrified Wood

[tim299]

I do not have a large fossil/rock collection, but what I do have I am proud of. This is my rarest piece I have. It is a piece of petrified wood from The Allan Hills, Antarctica. During the 2001-02 summer I was fortunate enough to land a job as a janitor at McMurdo and was night janitor at Crary Science Lab. So a guy I know had went out to do work in the area and brought back samples. He was like, "you want some petrified wood?" I happily took it not knowing at the time how rare and hard this was to get. Also, this is a rather large piece, being about the size of the palm of my hand and while we moved it split along a weak plane falling into two pieces. It was ok, because I can display it better now. I have some other rocks from Antarctica I will show at some point. Since my collection is small I will spread it out over time. 

[jcbshark]

Great piece: ) can't say I've seen anything else from there! Thanks for sharing 

[sdsnl]

Any idea how old it is?

[doushantuo]

Antarctic wood is mostly from the Cretaceous-Eocene 

one reason for that being this:

http://ioiusa.usf.edu/PPBlaboratory/paleolab_pdfs/FlowerKennett1994PPP.pdf

Some "dissidents" go for an earlier onset of antarctic glaciation,BTW

[strochim]

I know this was posted 5 years ago, but I'm just now reading it. I'd love to see and/or hear about what else you were able to bring back from Antarctica.