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Product Description
Arizona Petrified Picture Wood Araucarioxylon Polished Rock
This is a sliced and polished on one face, natural rough everywhere else, piece of Arizona Picture Wood that is 4.5 inches by 3.5 inches wide and .86 of an inch thick.
It has "bark" about 3/4 of the way around. This is from a very old collection ad the polish is not great.
This specimen is known as “Arizona Picture Wood” for its black bands and dendrites, as opposed to “Arizona Rainbow Wood” which has more "rainbow" colors and few if any dendrites.
The most important find in the world of Petrified Wood is in Northern Arizona. The majority of the petrified wood here is Araucarioxylon arizonicum, or Araucaria, a prehistoric type of conifer.
This Petrified Wood is found in the Chinle Formation and comes from the Triassic Period around 220 million years ago.
The "Petrified Forest" was made a National Park in 1962. In 1988 the Arizona state legislature designated petrified wood the Arizona state fossil.
Petrified Wood formed when a tree died and is quickly buried by sediments. Minerals in the groundwater then permeated the wood, replacing the original organic matter and turning it to stone. The main mineral is silica, but trace elements in the silica create a variety of colors.
