North America, Arizona, Late Triassic, ca. 225 million years ago. A massive, gorgeous slab of fossilized, petrified tree trunk, sliced crossways and highly polished on its planar sides to showcase the broad interior of the massive tree. The exterior bark is fossilized into a interior has been completely replaced by rough stone, while the interior features incredible, colorful quartz and agate in shades of earthy red, umber, ocher yellow, grey, and even almost translucent white. The interior of the slab has some natural openings which are a result of the shape of the tree trunk when the tree was fossilized. The rings of the tree are still clear and you can imagine its internal structure, formed hundreds of millions of years ago. It is accompanied by a hardcover book, "Ulrich Dernbach's Petrified Forests", 1996. Size: 34.5" W x 25.5" H (87.6 cm x 64.8 cm)
Fossilized trees from this time period come from the Chinle Formation of the southwestern USA, and the beautiful colors found in this formation - exemplified by the colors of this fossilized tree - give the Painted Desert of Arizona its name. During the Late Triassic, because of plate tectonics, this area was near the equator on the supercontinent Pangaea, with a humid, sub-tropical climate. It was a floodplain below mountains to its south and a sea to its west; as a result, massive trees washed down from the mountains and came to rest in sediments that preserved them and fossilized them. Nine different species of tree have been identified in the fossilized deposits in the region; this example may be Araucarioxylon arizonicum, an extinct conifer tree (and the state fossil of Arizona), which is the most commonly found. Fascinatingly, the Ancestral Puebloan people who lived in the region approximately one thousand years ago used petrified wood for making tools and even building houses!
Provenance: private Cipolla collection, Arizona, USA
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#125925
Condition
One side has been fully covered with a very thin semi-transparent sheet for protection; the other side is the fossil surface. The side with the protective sheet may have been the underside of a table or used to hold it in place as it gives the fossil a slightly distorted appearance through it. Very light wear on surface including scratching and a few faint deposits but overall it is in beautiful condition. The book is brand new but has a slight crinkle to the slip cover near the lower end of the spine.