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Product Description
Petrified Wood Polished Slab Rock Florissant Colorado
This is a lovely piece of Petrified Wood from Colorado that is 4.8 inches by 2.4 inches and .4 of an inch thick.
The petrified wood is from the late Eocene or about 34 million years old and is mostly Redwood or Sequoioxylon pearsallii trees.
The Florissant Formation, in the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument in Florissant, in Teller County, Colorado, has some of the largest petrified tree stumps in the world.
Early settlers came across these "mounds" and excavated the stumps using dynamite. Due to this method of excavation, many of the petrified stumps were fractured. Through a process known as freeze-thaw, water that gets trapped in the cracks of the stump froze and expanded when allowing for chunks of petrified wood to topple off the stump.
Early accounts describe the valley as being littered with petrified wood. As word spread, the Florissant area became a popular privately owned tourist destination. Collecting occurred for nearly 100 years.
It was first known as the Coplen Petrified Forest and later as the Colorado Petrified Forest. The property later sold to the Singer family, who operated it until it became a national monument in 1969 and collecting became illegal.
This petrified wood piece is from the Kirkby collection and was self-collected sometime in the 1930's to the 1960's.
