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Product Description
Opal Limb Cast Unpolished Petrified Wood Rough Rock Yakima
This is a lovely unpolished petrified wood full limb cast that is left natural rough.
The limb cast is 2.1 inches long and 2.2 inches by 1.6 inches.
It is shown wet in the first 4 pictures and weighs 7 ounces.
This is actually a limb cast, not petrified wood. The original wood actually rotted away, leaving a "mold" that filled with common opal, a hydrated form of silica. Some of the bark characteristics have been preserved.
Opal casts can be quite beautiful, with a milky white or translucent appearance. However, this is “common opal”, not precious opal and it does not display an opalescence or flash of colors.
This is from an old collection from the 50's and 60's and it was found on private property in Yakima, Washington.
Yakima Canyon, Washington, is a scenic area along the Yakima River. The canyon walls reveal layers of ancient volcanic ash and petrified wood.
Approximately 17.5 million years ago during the middle of the Miocene epoch, a series of large volcanic eruptions began in the eastern part of the Columbia River Plateau, near the present-day borders of Washington, Oregon and Idaho. When conditions were right, some of these forests and swamps were buried by subsequent flows and the trees were preserved by silica dissolved from volcanic ash and the basalts. This happened several times during the 10 million years of volcanic eruptions, resulting in numerous deposits of fossilized wood across the Columbia Plateau.
