How long does it take to make petrified wood?

The petrified forest national park is named after its extensive deposits of petrified wood. The forest is so beautiful that it was used as the backdrop for a movie.

What is petrified wood? How is it made and how long does it take to form.

David Sunderlin, a professor of geology at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, told Live Science that petrified wood is a type of wood.

How does petrified wood form?

Wood has to be buried quickly under mud, silt or volcanic ash in order for it to be petrified. If the ground in which the wood is buried is not sufficiently dense, it won't be able to interact with oxygen or organisms, so will be unable to decay. The organic material can become fossils. The dead tree's remains are replaced over time by the water's minerals, as part of the process known as "woody mineralogy." The Quekett Microscopical Club, one of the world's oldest organizations dedicated to microscopy, says that the minerals in petrified wood tend to be silica, calcite, and other minerals.

What happened to Earth's first forests?

The minerals have replaced and taken on the appearance of the wood that was once there.

Sunderlin said that mineral precipitation in or between the wood's cellular structures or mineral replacement of the actual organic material that once made up the cell walls of the wood are both possibilities. The two processes are called permineralization and replacement.

How long does it take for wood to become petrified?

It can take a long time on a human time scale, but sometimes we see cases of amazingly quick wood preservation. Some petrified wood is being formed in fallen logs in mineral hot springs, such as those at the park. They accumulate large amounts of mineral in their tissues year after year. Much of the petrified wood we see in the rock record was formed over a long period of time.

The amount of time it takes for wood to become petrified depends on a number of factors, the most important of which is the amount of water in the ground.

Where does petrified wood form?

Some environments are better for petrified wood than others.

Sunderlin said that many of the world's most famous petrified wood localities are in exposed sedimentary rocks. These are places where low dissolved oxygen levels prevented the growth ofbacteria. In order to petrify the wood and remove the tree's original organic matter, the wood had to be buried in these places.

Sunderlin said that petrified wood has been found in the fossil record in these and other paleoenvironmental settings.

What about petrified wood's scientific value is not known. Is studying it helpful?

Similar to the study of growth rings in modern wood, petrified wood can be used to learn about the ancient past of a tree. petrified wood can tell of an environment's ecology when it's preserved correctly.

Sunderlin said that scientists can look for signatures of rain or a dry spell reflected in the wood rings. It is possible for researchers to learn more about the evolution and ecology of wood if they compare it to modern examples.

Scientists have found a way to make petrified wood in the lab in a day or two.

Scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory recreated the process of converting wood into ceramic under laboratory conditions. The process involved cutting the wood into small cubes, soaking the pieces in hydrochloric acid for two days, and then submerging them in a solution ofsilica. The pieces were put into a furnace filled with gas and baked for two hours.

The method yields a positive reproduction of the wood according to the statement.

The original was published on Live Science on Nov. 30, 2012