Found in Wyoming on the Shoshone River between Cody and Yellowstone NP.
1- I thought this was for sure when I picked it up, but I didn’t expect it to fracture
2- I think this is a no but does anyone know what is going on there?? It’s odd. The backside of it is clearly rock.
3-this one I am leaning yes
4- no clue! The back looks like a rock
5- leaning yes
Then the last pic is some from the weekend!
Found in Cattaraugus County, New York, hiking near Allegany State Park. Exposed cross section looks nearly porous, or like fine sand sediment.
UPDATE: I sent a video and photos to a gentleman in Turkey who cuts and sells limb casts, and he confirmed it looks like limb casts from Amasya, Turkey.
I found this in a bin that was filled with pet wood and pink limb casts. Is it truly a limb/trunk cast or just agate shaped like a trunk? It’s tapered as well.
Found some palm wood on this field. Also lots of agates there too.
If so then this makes my first piece! Found in SW Washington. Also it scratches glass.
Here are two pieces of somewhat rare fossil wood and limb cast from central Oregon. First piece is a colorful limb cast from Marston Ranch. The second is feather wood. The feathery patterns in this fossil wood are created by fungus.
So I've been working through about 400lbs of pet wood from a dumped collection of rough from an estate.
I was neutralizing waste that came off when I decided to pan it out to see if there were any interesting chips.
These agatized shell casts started coming out. Got me super excited as I had never heard of it before.
Are there other areas that have gastropod fossils in the matrix? Other cool fossils?
I believe these to be Elima Tenera.
Also some pics of pieces being worked on just to keep a bit more topical.
Wondered if anyone out there could help me out ? I was wondering what kind of wood this is ? All I do know , It's petrified. It's 18 in long × 13 in wide × 8 in thick and weighs about 60 lb . Any help would be great.
Thanks in advance
guys I really have no idea I didn’t think there was much or any in SW Ohio but google image search (ik its bad) said yes soooo 🤷♂️
Found this on the bottom of the Berzdorfer See near Görlitz, eastern Germany. The lake is a former open-cast lignite (brown coal) mine that was flooded after it closed. The lignite there is Miocene, so the whole pit is basically the remains of an ancient swamp forest — the coal itself is fossilized vegetation.
That’s what makes me suspect this is petrified wood: it came out of the same deposit that produced the coal, it has a strong woody grain running through it, and it scratches glass easily, so it feels mineralized/silicified rather than soft.
Am I right that this is petrified wood, or could it be something else? Thanks!
I half attempted to hand shine this rock, but I learned that lesson really quickly. The wavy lines go all the way around. It doesn't look like other petrified woods that I've seen but I don't know what else has this visual pattern. It's on the harder end of spectrum
The colors in this silicified piece are absolutely insane when they hit the light! The deep, smoky blacks and midnight blues are likely the result of manganese or carbon saturating the wood fibers during the fossilization process millions of years ago.
Found this myself on the bottom of the Berzdorfer See near Görlitz, in eastern Saxony, Germany. The lake is the flooded remnant of the Berzdorf open-cast lignite (brown coal) mine, which operated until 1997 before being flooded. The lignite there is Miocene, so I’m assuming this is a fossil wood fragment from the same ancient swamp forest that formed the coal — roughly 15–20 million years old.
It’s a hand-sized elongated fragment6cm long with strong longitudinal wood grain still clearly visible. Color is olive green with orange/brown iron staining and some darker, more carbonized (lignite-like) zones — looks like the piece preserves both silicified and partly coalified material.
Tests I’ve done so far:
**• Hardness:** it scratches glass easily and “bites” into it, so I’m reading it as \~7 → silicified (chalcedony/opal range), not the soft coalified type.
**• Luster:** waxy to vitreous, especially when wet.
**• Macro photos:** under magnification I can see parallel fiber and aligned pores along the grain, but the surface is rough/unpolished so I can’t resolve individual cells well. I’m seeing the longitudinal view, not a clean transverse section.
A couple of questions for the group:
**1.** Does this read as silicified fossil wood to you, or could part of it be something else?
**2.** The Miocene Lusatian lignite swamp forests were dominated by swamp-cypress relatives (Taxodium / Glyptostrobus), and the common fossil wood from these deposits is classified as *Taxodioxylon*. Any chance to confirm conifer vs. hardwood from these photos, or would I need a sanded transverse face / thin section?
Help confirm?