Description
Fossil, Fossilized wood from Poison Springs, Utah. Specimen #22.
You will receive this exact specimen, which is approximately 5 1/2″ long x 3 1/2″ tall x 3″ deep.
Fossilized wood from Poison Springs, Utah, is a window into a lush, vanished world that existed roughly 200 million years ago during the Late Triassic. Today the region is stark desert, but back then it was a warm, river-laced landscape of towering conifers and fern forests. When these ancient trees fell, they were quickly buried by volcanic ash and sediment. Mineral-rich groundwater slowly permeated the wood, replacing each cell with silica while preserving the microscopic structure. Over millions of years, this process turned living tissue into stone without destroying the growth rings, vessels, and even cell walls.
What makes Poison Springs petrified wood especially fascinating is its coloration and texture. Iron, manganese, and other trace elements in the groundwater stained the silica in reds, yellows, browns, and purples, creating natural patterns that resemble abstract paintings locked inside crystal. Each piece is both a geological specimen and a biological fossil, recording not only the chemistry of ancient groundwater but also the anatomy of trees that once shaded dinosaurs.
Fossilized wood, often called petrified wood, is the stone “memory” of an ancient forest. Millions of years ago, trees were buried by sediment, cutting off oxygen and slowing decay. Mineral-rich groundwater then seeped through the wood’s microscopic клетка-sized spaces, replacing the original organic material molecule by molecule with silica, calcite, or iron oxides. The result is a perfect mineral cast of the tree’s internal structure—growth rings, knots, and even tiny cells preserved in stone.
Colors in fossilized wood tell a geologic story: reds and yellows come from iron, blacks from carbon or manganese, and greens from trace copper or chromium. Each piece is both a fossil and a crystal, recording the climate, chemistry, and ecosystems of deep time while retaining the familiar form of bark and branches.
