Talk:Petrified wood

Images

Petrified Wood

I have this image, which offers a lot more detail. Adding or replacing? --Dschwen 01:56, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I just added it at 300px just to see what it looked like with the earlier pic. What do you think? I'd say add it. Play with size maybe. -Vsmith 02:43, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

With two pics in the article I think I prefer the Wikipedia default thumbnail size. The fullsize pictures on the other hand should be as big as possible (in agreement with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Image_use_policy --Dschwen 02:54, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Works for me. That is a great photo at full scale. The article could use a bit more info ... maybe some day. -Vsmith 03:16, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Additional information

How long does it take petrified wood to form?

I would really like to know that also. I think this article needs a little more info. It's why I searched the article out. --Shinto 07:03, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

How do these trees form, if they are going through layers that span 100 000 years? :X --Ningyou 03:52, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, more specific information relating to the age of such fossils is needed here. Such wood fossils are paleontologically "recent", because hardwood plants/trees came into being after the Cretaceous period of geologic time came to an end some 65 million years ago - along with the dinosaurs - because of a cometary collision with Earth. -- Khorasani 14:26, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I just come back from a trip to Indonesia, where they had vast quantities of petrified wood for sale. The origin of this is Kalimantan (Borneo, Sulawesi, Sumatra and Java. The coloers vary from black to white with a lot of yellowish, orange teints inbetween. I am not a scholar on this subject so I happily leave it to other, more subject educated, people to update the main page. I'll try and leave a picture of quite a large trunk (about 2,000 KGS). Willem Couwenbergh, 21 May 2007, 16.45H

The article linked to http://www.nps.gov/pefo/faqs.htm should be quoted in in context as it is being abused "How long does it take wood to petrify? Probably less than 100 years. These logs were petrified during the Upper Triassic and have remained so until the present. The organic matter needs to turn to stone before it rots completely."

I will add the missing portion of the quote to the article - Paul Baird —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pgb62uk (talk • contribs) 08:39, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Three problems.

1) I can't find any such quote on the page linked.

2) Even if it was there once, it presumably only refers to that single site, not to fossilised woods in general.

3) This article gives figures of both 1000 years and 100 years. Both figures can not be correct. Mark Marathon (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 22:50, 10 April 2012 (UTC).

Merge?

The articles of Fossil wood and Petrified wood are on the same subject. Is there a reason why we should have two articles on this, especially when neither is large enough at the moment to warrant a content fork? Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 05:39, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Are these articles about completely the same thing? In Fossil wood, it says, "Fossil wood may or may not be petrified"; if that is correct, we would still need a separate article on fossil woods that are not petrified. In Petrified wood, it says, "Petrified wood is a type of fossil", indicating membership, but not equivalence. - Neparis (talk) 20:23, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

At the same time the article on fossils say — "Fossils (from Latin fossus, literally "having been dug up") are the mineralized or otherwise preserved remains or traces (such as footprints) of animals, plants, and other organisms" — and the article on petrification says — "In geology, petrifaction or petrification is the process by which organic material is converted into stone or a similar substance." The other types of fossils apparently are fossil records of animals, microbes, paw prints and such stuff. The "may or may not be petrified" part seems to a description of extreme conditions, may be good for a section at the bottom of page. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 01:34, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm to add my opinion into this place. Fossil wood isn't really fossil. It's really actually petrified wood since it's been "turned into stone" and thus is petrified. I think it should be merged. Fossil wood should be put into petrified wood instead. This way, it is more "correct" due to the petrified part, instead of fossil, where it has to be dug up, but petrified wood isn't dug up. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.93.170.84 (talk) 01:28, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Merge per nom. — Frecklefσσt | Talk 20:33, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Why the merge template has been removed without actually merging? The consensus apparently was for merging. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 13:57, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Petrified wood is a kind of fossil wood, but not all fossil wood is petrified, as the fossil wood article makes clear. Wood in submerged forests is considered fossil wood because it has been preserved long past the point at which it would ordinarily have been expected to have decomposed, but it isn't petrified because its tissues have not been significantly mineralized. So no, this article and the one on fossil wood shouldn't be merged--and the photo of a stump at Ynyslas Beach should probably be deleted, as it depicts post-Ice Age fossil wood, not true petrified wood. 206.208.105.129 (talk) 14:32, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

Concerning Wood and trees

This page is titled "Petrified wood". The problem is that "wood' is a specific type of plant tissue, and it already has a Wikipedia article that explains what it is. In contrast the material referred to as "Petrified Wood" is mostly the remains of plants such as palms. ferns and lycophytes, that do not produce wood of any sort. Some "Petrified Wood" is literal "petrified wood" from gymnosperms and even a tiny number of angiosperms, but most "Petrified Wood" is just the stems of tall herbs, and this not literal "petrified wood". There's no problem with having a page on "Petrifed Wood", but we need to be consistent in our use of capitalisation, to make it clear that Petrifed Wood (ie the three dimensional fossilised stems of tall plants) is not the same as petrified wood (ie the wood tissue that has been petrified).

We also need to avoid using the term "wood" to refer to this material. I've replaced "wood" with "stem tissue" and similar terms throughout which avoids the problem of deciding when editors were referring to wood, and when they were referring to non-woody stems. I suggest that any future edits follow the same standard.

We had a similar problem with the usage of "trees" in this article. Trees are tall plants with woody stems, and once again their is a Wikipedia article dealing with what they are and what they are not. Since most Petrified Wood is not from plants that produce wood, it therefore doesn't come from trees either. I think I've corrected this problem by simply replacing "tree" with "plant" throughout.Mark Marathon (talk) 23:02, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Can you show that the article here is using the term petrified wood in a manner that is inconsistent with the paleontological literature?--Kevmin § 07:46, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Petrified wood/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Comment(s)

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I live in south central Texas, a place that used to be the bottom of a shallow sea. There are many different kinds of petrified wood on this property. Many I believe to be several hard wood types, although I do not have the equipment to classify the different types. Many I know are petrified palm wood. There are many kinds of different palm woods on this property, some of which are the state stone of Texas. I have found some sort of petrified vine, and after cutting it I still do not know for sure what it is. The person that runs a rock shop has said it was some sort of vine. It is coal black with some red spots in the cut end. It is a beautriful peace. I have also found a lot of marine fossils and I can not find anyplace on the web to identify them. They are not in several books on Texas fossils. i have several grasses in what appears to be flint rock and what appears to be some sort of tube worm in flint also. I have found several of these. If any one from Texas reads this I would like to hear from you via email.tooter 04:33, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Last edited at 22:00, 3 May 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 02:47, 30 April 2016 (UTC)