#Petrified rock free#

This is why, petrified wood is valuable on the market as well, if the specimen is of higher quality. Usually, it takes between 5,000 to 10,000 years for wood to petrify. You can usually find petrified wood in creeks, streams, national parks, beaches, lakes, rivers, fields, quarries, and other designated public collection sites that often require permits to access them. The beautiful part about petrified wood is that all of them are unique, varying in shapes, sizes, and colors. As the organic material was replaced by minerals due to decay, the tree was replaced by stone in time.

Petrified wood occurs only in ash or sediment buried trees that were deprived of oxygen, but later a water source found its way to them carrying with it certain minerals that remained in the plant’s cells. Even if you aren’t located in any of these states, there are still big chances to find petrified wood nonetheless. If you live in Colorado, Arizona, Wyoming, North or South Dakota, or Utah, you are lucky, as these are among the most popular places where petrified wood is found. No additional chemicals should be used on Fossil Wood to avoid damage or staining.If you are interested in checking out the best books about rock and minerals identification you can find them by clicking here (Amazon link). Rinse and repeat this process until you are able to place stones in a clean bucket of water and observe no noticeable change in color. Scrub and redip each stone thoroughly in the bucket of water. Begin by placing stones in a bucket of cold water. This will assure all loose sediments are removed as well as potential toxins. It is always good practice to clean Petrified Wood when buying it from a source.

#Petrified rock free#

If possible, try to aim for colors that are generally free of green, black, purple, or blue as they tend to contain carbon, cobalt, chrome, or copper. Extremely colorful variations of the rock could potentially have harmful minerals within it as well that could lead to injury to more sensitive fish and invertebrates. This can lead to damaging of the enclosure or harm to the inhabitants if not securely placed within the tank. Like many stones that contain quartz, Fossil Wood can be rather heavy when used in large amounts. The minerals that make up the stone are high on the hardness scale and will prove to last a long time with very little weathering. The possible leaching of metals like iron into an aquarium over slow periods of time can be very beneficial to plants. Advantagesīesides the eccentric look, Petrified Wood brings, it is a safe rock considered to be inert and can be used in any type of enclosure. Fossil Wood can virtually take any shape the original plant was and be found all over the world. The word in itself literally translates to “wood turned to stone” in Latin.

It is commonly referred to as Fossil Wood or Petrified Stone because it is technically a fossilized version of some type of plant material. Petrified Wood is a sedimentary rock composed of mostly silicate minerals like quartz along with calcite, opal, and pyrite on occasion.

Habitat: Petrified Forest, Volcano FieldsĬolor: White, Black, Tan, Brown, Pink, Green, BlueĮlemental Type: Sedimentary Rock (Quartz) Origin: Volcanic Deposit, Sedimentary Rock Common Names: Fossil Wood, Petrified Stone