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Blue Forest Petrified Wood Trip and Questions


minnbuckeye

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Back when I visited Seth's fossil fish quarry near Kemmerer, I had the opportunity to explore the outback of SW Wyoming as my wife and I tried to find the blue petrified forest. I had found explicit directions as to how to reach my destination:  

 

Sep 16, 2012 - Uploaded by Samuel Martin

This is a video documenting ACCURATE and HONEST directions to the "Blue Forest" in Sweetwater County ...

 

 Please watch this video as it is absolutely true!!! It is 2 minutes long and set to great music. Some of the instructions say odd things like "turn right at a trash can". Now who would expect to see a trash can  IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. We hadn't seen anything along this path but sagebrush for 7 miles! But there it was.My wife was very hesitant to continue on past this as it narrowed and became rough. In fact a slight argument took place by this important landmark. For once I won, even though it was through compromise (she gave me 15 minutes to find our destination). We did make it and as the video shows, you are there when you see all of the holes dug. Our time was spent just surface collecting and time wise, we put a little over an hour attempting to find this blue wood. If one was to visit this site for the purpose of serious collection, BRING A SHOVEL/PICK and I am sure you could put our finds to shame.      

 

This first picture shows the shards of wood that litter the ground:

 

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A closer look at one of the pieces :

 

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This next piece has orange crystals along side the blue wood. Any one able to identify these crystals ?

 

DSC_0330.thumb.JPG.ce4f762ad606f34a266f0ef153def7f1.JPG 

 

 Here is a piece that I would love to clean up a bit. It appears to be a significant piece of a branch. Are there any suggestions on how to do this without harming the specimen? I did experiment with acid. It did little to the matrix but unfortunately turned the blue rock totally white. Now I need a chemist to explain that reaction!!

 

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...make a left when you see the strange looking young man with a banjo.

Whow, Deliverance flashbacks!

 

 

 

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Here are a few more specimens I would like to know how to clean.

 

 DSC_0335.thumb.JPG.fae948acc78d5b222deb0cbd413908ce.JPGDSC_0353.thumb.JPG.ee2288be1c929f11252324b16b72f3d6.JPG 

 

 

I also explored a little back country close to Seth's Quarry. I am used to Ordovician sea life so this petrified wood stuff leaves me a little unsure. The first picture is a piece from the blue forest, definitely wood (I think). The next picture is by Seth's quarry half way back to the pavement for those who have been there. Both pieces look similar except the blue mineralization on the one. So are the both petrified wood?

 

DSC_0341.thumb.JPG.185a91f7988c856020631bc4ae108712.JPG

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DSC_0343.thumb.JPG.2c508c2c889f84d512b25a2d1be71a76.JPG 

 

Here is it's cut surface:

 

 DSC_0346.thumb.JPG.54490f87891b61ad04eb1e13e9d66a9c.JPG 

 

 Finally, I found many pieces that looked like burnt wood on top , colored on it's sides but black on the interior when I split it. Is this just a rock or is it wood??? 

 

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@sseth

 

 

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I believe the orange mineral is golden calcite which is said to occur alongside the quartz and blue chalcedony. 

Lovely finds! 

Life's Good!

Tortoise Friend.

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Glad that you were able to collect in the famous Blue Forest. When we were there back in 2009 we went out with the guy who took us digging in the quarry to visit there and load up on some pet wood. We took his truck and I'm glad we did because our rental car would not have gotten us as far in--we still had to walk a ways to the spot we dug in. We only dug for a bit as the ground was like concrete and an hour of effort only got us a foot deep into this impenetrable matrix. Additionally, I'm currently a creature of sea-level oxygenation and the rarified air at those altitude was making me winded and giving me a headache. :blink: We ended up surface collecting on the slopes and found lots of nice pieces that had eroded out. At first anything that was pet wood made it into our buckets (our first experience with pet wood), but after a while we became selective and starting looking for full round (though compressed into ovals). I remember it as being great fun but I don't think I took my camera (left in our car) so I have no visuals to take me back to the moment. Great fun as far as I remember it. We concluded our trip (after visiting Grand Teton and Yellowstone) with a side trip to Delta, UT before flying home. By the end of the trip we had several hundred pounds of Kemmerer fish, Blue Forest wood and Wheeler Shale trilobites and we would have had to charter a cargo plane to get it home. We judiciously sorted out or best and favorite finds and left the rest with the owner of A New Dig quarry in Delta since he goes to mineral and fossil shows a lot--no sense in wasting good fossils. :)

 

As I recall the Blue Forest wood had interesting preservation that entailed a layer of algae that encased the pieces as well as silica-laded Eocene age volcanic ask that entombed and petrified the wood. Most pieces show a light tan 'rind' around them which I take to be characteristic of the Blue Forest wood. I cannot speak about how to clean this off or why acid would change the coloration of the silicified portions (would have thought that to be relatively chemically impervious).

 

As the area around Kemmerer is famously loaded with coal (you may have noticed the large coal-burning power plant just outside of town when you were there), I'm going to take a wild guess and suspect that your last piece might be Bituminous Coal. There would be one conclusive way to determine that and that would be to take a flame to it.

 

Looks like you had fun and I'll never again question directions that say "turn right at trash can". ;)

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

 

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Nice wood!

I have had good results using vinegar in the microwave (30 seconds at a time.) to clean the calcitic algae off of the wood, just don't let it get to hot. This method will destroy the orange calcite crystals also.

 I guess You could use a low heat on the stove.

Darwin said: " Man sprang from monkeys."

Will Rogers said: " Some of them didn't spring far enough."

 

My Fossil collection - My Mineral collection

My favorite thread on TFF.

 

 

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As a Wyoming almost-native, I always get a chuckle when city folks come out here and feel uncomfortable with our wide expanses of nothing.  Glad you followed the directions, for they are indeed good.  Yes, with a pick and shovel and a half a day, you can get some nice pieces here.  I have cleaned that stuff off with hydrochloric acid, and I don't think I lost any color.  Be careful with the acid, though.  Don't let the pets get too close. 

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The last three pictures look like somewhat wheatered coal.

The specimen with the sawn surface looks like coalified wood - density? hardness? flame test?

Franz Bernhard

 

 

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@minnbuckeye  Great finds and I'll bet you are glad you won that argument with your wife! @digit is correct that the vesicular tan material that surrounds much of the wood exterior is fossilized Stromatolite. The wood fell into a swampy area where algae would coat and grow on the surface. At times this layer can be several inches thick and you might be surprised to find that the large rounded mound of Stromatolite you found has a teensy twig in the middle. All that algal growth has been silicified and is best removed with a chisel and hammer for the bulk and then scribing tools for the closer work.

 

As for the wood, the preservation, as I've been told, is a form of common opal resulting from the volcanic ash which was also rich in Tin. The Tin gives the agate it's blue color and also colors the wood black on fresh breaks or cuts. You can leave the wood out to weather in the sun and it will naturally lighten or you can speed the process along by soaking it in Bleach.  The orange colored material is indeed Calcite, as @Tidgy's Dad said. Often the broken splinters of fossil wood will have a thin coating of Caliche which is common in desert regions. It's a coating of calcium carbonate that gets deposited by the infrequent rains. Vinegar or other acids will take it off and might affect the color of the agate slightly but only on the surface. I think the black coatings on the agate are Tin Oxide but I could be wrong.  The very best pieces of Blue Forest fossil wood have a combination of the Black, Blue, and Orange colors of the various minerals. If you want to show off wood grain, exterior wood features, or agate then dissolve the Calcite away. 

 

I would agree that the black rocks you found around Kemmerer are Coal, perhaps not quite Bituminous grade but close. The third piece with the thin vein is definitely coal. I recognize the squarish fracture pattern present in the piece with the thin seam. I've seen similar patterning in Devonian coalified wood and occasionally Pennsylvanian wood. Remember that Coal is formed by both pressure and heat. Eastern PA gets Anthracite coal because it had lots of pressure (Appalachian mountain building) and heat. Western PA has Bituminous coal because less pressure but still heat. The Neozoic coal seams around Kemmerer have had less of both and so I think it's not quite Bituminous but more than Lignite.

 

Hope this helps!

-Dave

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Thanks for all of the educational responses!! Between you all and the research I have done, I've gained a little confidence to tackle a media I know little about. But if I fail, I can always take my wife back to the garbage can for next year's wedding anniversary and collect some more!!

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18 hours ago, Shamalama said:

 

The last three pictures look like somewhat wheatered coal.

The specimen with the sawn surface looks like coalified wood - density? hardness? flame test?

Franz Bernhard

 

 

@FranzBernhard 

Never heard of coalified wood. I did burn my unknowns and the one sample IS coal. The one with the cut surface was NOT altered by flame, no odor. Though I have not tried to scratch it, it is very dense.        Found this definition: 

coalification

(ˌkəʊlɪfɪˈkeɪʃən)

n
the compression, over time, of plant matter into coal
 
 If my "wood" was coalified, would it not have burnt when I placed a flame to it? I tried to bleach the cut end. Still pitch black. Though the bleach water was stained from the specimen. It looked to be the color that one gets when removing tar from something with a solvent. 
 
If it is coalified, I am happy to keep it. It would be an educational piece when children (and adults) look at my finds. If it is just one of the billions of nondescript rocks littering the SW part of Wyoming, I would like to put it out back in my discard pile. Opinions welcomed.
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minbuckeye,

our definition of coalification is nearly correct, just heat is also necessary. Whole tree trunks can be coalified, "whitby jet" is also coalified wood. Or this examples:

https://www.mindat.org/photo-769053.html

https://www.mindat.org/photo-769046.html

Both are upper cretaceous (turonian) in age.

 

Your sawn specimen in question is dense and does not burn, so it is not coalified. But there is the possibility, that a large part of this piece is silicified and other, very small, perhaps microspopic, parts are coalified, hence some color comes off with bleach. Or it is something completely different.

 

Here are some examples of such mixtures from Austria, all from the same area of subbituminous grade and miocene in age:

The first image shows coalified wood with some zones of silification, the left piece with sawn surface, the right piece polished.

In the second image, all with sawn surface, the two pieces to the left are trunks that are silicified in the center and coalified at the rim. Note, that also the silicified part contains some coalified particles, only visible on a polished surface. The piece in the lower right is largely silicified, but has also some coalified zones. Of special interest is the lower- and rightmost part of this specimen, where silicified and coalified layers are alternating, maybe representig annual rings of the wood.

 

Franz Bernhard

Schnitte2.jpg

Schnitte1.jpg

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