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Product Description
Petrified Wood Woodworthia Polished Piece Arizona
Lovely Petrified Wood known as Woodworthia from northern Arizona that has been slabbed and polished on one face.
It is 4.7 inches by 3 inches and 7.5 mm or .3 inch thick.
This piece is from an old collection from the 1930's-1960's. It doesn't stand, but sits at a nice slant for display.
Most of the petrified wood from the Chinle Formation in Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico is Arucarioxylon arizonicum (Auracaria), but a small amount of 2 much rarer species of wood, Woodworthia arizonica and Schilderia adamanica, are also present in Arizona and in very small amounts in the Wolverine Petrified Forest in Utah.
The fossil trunks of the Woodworthia trees are covered with distinctive small, shallow holes about 1/4 inch in diameter. These holes apparently represent buds or small branches that never fully developed. The tree was about half the height of the more common Araucaria and also had lateral branches irregularly arranged along the trunk. The Woodworthia tree does not have annual growth rings and its leaves and reproductive structures are still unknown, but it is believed to have been a 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.
