File:Fossil wood 1 (14925588764).jpg

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Summary

Description

Fossil wood (quartz permineralized fossil wood) (15.5 cm across)

Plants are multicellular, photosynthetic eucaryotes. The oldest known land plant body fossils are Silurian in age. Fossil root traces of land plants are known back in the Ordovician. The Devonian was the key time interval during which land plants flourished and Earth experienced its first “greening” of the land. The earliest land plants were small and simple and probably remained close to bodies of water. By the Late Devonian, land plants had evolved large, tree-sized bodies and the first-ever forests appeared.

The fossils shown above are "petrified wood", which is a horrible term for what is technically called permineralization. Biogenic materials such as wood or bone have a fair amount of small-scale porosity. After burial, the porosity of wood or bone can get partially or completely filled up with minerals as groundwater or diagenetic fluids percolate through. The end result is a harder, denser material that retains the original three-dimensionality (or close to it). The wood or bone has become “petrified”. Well, no - it’s become permineralized. Not surprisingly, the most common permineralization mineral is quartz (SiO2). Sometimes, fossil wood and bone have been permineralized with radioactive minerals such as black uraninite (UO2) or yellowish carnotite (K2(UO2)2(VO4)2·3H2O). Recently, fossil bones permineralized with cinnabar have been identified (García-Alix et al., 2013, Lethaia 46: 1-6).
Date
Source Fossil wood 1
Author James St. John

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This image was originally posted to Flickr by jsj1771 at https://www.flickr.com/photos/47445767@N05/14925588764. It was reviewed on 6 May 2015 by FlickreviewR and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0.

6 May 2015

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15 October 2014

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current07:05, 7 May 2015Thumbnail for version as of 07:05, 7 May 20151,414 × 1,489 (274 KB)Natuur12Transferred from Flickr via Flickr2Commons
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