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Product Description
Petrified Wood Polished Round Slab Salmon River Idaho
Lovely Petrified Wood from Idaho that has been slabbed, and polished on one face.
This polished petrified wood slab is 6.5 inches by 3.63 inches and .71 of an inch thick.
Idaho has a petrified forest from the Oligocene Epoch, about 50 million years ago.
Located about ten miles south of Challis and near the Salmon River, the Malm Gulch forest was cool and wet, like today’s Pacific Coast, and covered with Redwoods and Sequoias.
However, this all changed when volcanic ash from erupting volcanos covered the land. This caused the trees to petrify, meaning that what remained of the wood was replaced with silica.
In 1970, the BLM installed fences around the stumps and continues to manage the area.
This piece is from the Kirkby collection and was self-collected sometime in the 1930's to the 1960's.
Petrified Wood formed when a tree died and was 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.
