Fossil wood or mineral vein?

[Rockwood]

57 minutes ago, Innocentx said:

It may be a type of wrapping growth pattern I or we are unfamiliar with??

I think that's it.

Vegatative is quite distinct from wood as one might envision it. 

[Archie]

3 hours ago, Innocentx said:

I find this unexplainable using either theory, slickensides/fibers or wood. 

It may be a type of wrapping growth pattern I or we are unfamiliar with??

Me too! I'm in the stepped slichenside with calcite slichenfibres camp but cant find another example like it with the fibres running at 90 degress to each other. My friend has contacted the National Museum of Scotland who have put him in touch with a specialist in fossil wood, he's sending them a sample so hopefully they will be able to confirm if it is indeed wood or not.  

[ynot]

1 minute ago, Archie said:

, he's sending them a sample so hopefully they will be able to confirm

Looking forward to seeing what they say.

[Archie]

I'll post again as soon as I get those pics or anything new comes to light, thanks for your input so far everyone much appreciated!  

[DPS Ammonite]

Archie, is there more the one layer (orange) that is 90 degrees to the main fibrous layer? In other words, are there more than two layers that are stacked on top of each other at 90 degrees? It is unlikely that even two layers would be perfectly 90 degrees to each other let alone several layers without the whole thing being organic (plant).

[BobWill]

It looks a lot like this piece I found at the Pennsylvanian site in Jacksboro Texas. That's a mm scale.

 

 

[Rockwood]

To quote the peanuts characters  THAT"S IT !  

[Rockwood]

Another place I've seen this pattern is in the exaggerated ray structure in the wood on the under side of a large horizontally oriented oak limb. 

[supertramp]

maybe a radial plane of fossil wood?

 

"A block of oak wood showing the tangential plane (T) and the radial plane (R). The parallel lines on the radial side are annual rings. The blotches of cells at right angles to the annual rings are rays (ribbonlike aggregations of cells extending radially through the xylem tissue).

 

https://www2.palomar.edu/users/warmstrong/trjuly99.htm

 

[ynot]

13 hours ago, BobWill said:

It looks a lot like this piece I

Yes, but what is it?

[Rockwood]

2 hours ago, supertramp said:

maybe a radial plane of fossil wood?

Thanks. My specimen would be hard to photograph in the middle of a blizzard.

[KimTexan]

22 hours ago, Archie said:

I'm still waiting to get the pics of the polished section and a close up of the contact between the object and the matrix but heres another couple of pics showing the object in-situ closer up (unfortunately the cliff face is highly weathered) and another couple of pics of the surface under magnification showing the rods, we didnt measure them at the time but from memory they are less than 1mm in diameter.

 

I am very much in the plant camp.

These remind me of a type of Calamities a bit.

Here is a piece of Calamities tree trunk I have. Granted it doesn’t have the strong crosshatch running perpendicular. This one is from Arkansas.

 

Regarding plant material in sandstone. I have found beautifully preserved pet wood in sandstone, ironstone concretions.

These are examples of calcite slickenside that I have. 

 

This is pet wood in situ found in sandstone on the left of the pic. Eocene in age.

 

These all came from sandstone. The one on the far left is the same as the one above. Some look like modern pine wood but are fossilized.

[BobWill]

3 hours ago, ynot said:

Yes, but what is it?

Ahh, well that question was already (not quite) answered in this thread:

 

[Archie]

18 hours ago, DPS Ammonite said:

Archie, is there more the one layer (orange) that is 90 degrees to the main fibrous layer? In other words, are there more than two layers that are stacked on top of each other at 90 degrees? It is unlikely that even two layers would be perfectly 90 degrees to each other let alone several layers without the whole thing being organic (plant).

It is many layers stacked on top of each other, the small fragment my friend showed me under magnification was at least half a dozen layers.

[Archie]

17 hours ago, BobWill said:

It looks a lot like this piece I found at the Pennsylvanian site in Jacksboro Texas. That's a mm scale.

 

 

It does look very similar to this piece in structure! It seems this is carbonised though while my friends specimen (at least the surface of it) seems to be calcite which I don't understand.

[Archie]

Also it doesn't seem like this piece was ever positively ID'd in that thread and even though its carbonized I'm still struggling to see how it could be vegetative? I feel like the only wood I've ever seen that's anything like it is plywood, I'm really puzzled over this! 

[ynot]

1 hour ago, Archie said:

the only wood I've ever seen that's anything like it is plywood, I'm really puzzled over this! 

Your not the only one puzzled by this.

[Rockwood]

Here's an attempt at the oak limb ray structure.

[Rockwood]

I'm not arguing that it's oak wood, just the concept of the growth pattern. Perhaps some earlier plants had a more robust mechanism for producing it ? 

[BobWill]

Just now, Rockwood said:

I'm not arguing that it's oak wood, just the concept of the growth pattern. Perhaps some earlier plants had a more robust mechanism for producing it ? 

Is can see where you are going with this but the lines that are crossing on the oak board seem to be superimposed so you can see both together. Archie's mention of plywood got me thinking about how the layers are placed with the grain running in opposite directions for strength so I had a second look with that in mind. The layers in Archie's do alternate the grain direction but not in mine. It's the edges where part has broken away that run cross-ways to the grain in my sample so these may not be so similar after all. Archie's broken away edges are not as straight.

[Archie]

[Rockwood]

 

7 minutes ago, BobWill said:

the lines that are crossing on the oak board seem to be superimposed so you can see both together.

It's a little out of focus, but it shows the layering of the rays better. They just aren't as densely packed. 

[Archie]

Heres some close ups of the matrix on the back of the piece, my friend still thinks this is sedimentary i.e. a conglomerate formed in a  high energy river while I still think it is volcanic. 1mm scale rule.

[KimTexan]

9 minutes ago, Archie said:

 

 

These structures don’t look anything like calcite to me and look a lot like plant cellular structures. 

It is a very interesting piece.

[Rockwood]

8 minutes ago, Archie said:

Heres some close ups of the matrix on the back of the piece, my friend still thinks this is sedimentary i.e. a conglomerate formed in a  high energy river while I still think it is volcanic. 1mm scale rule.

There can sometimes be a fine line between sedimentary and volcanicly caused rapid sedimentary.