"But the real rarity about these trees is that ... their original wood got preserved ... they did not turn into stone."
Posted on 08/02/2007 8:29:50 PM PDT by Fred Nerks
BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungarian scientists said on Tuesday they have discovered a group of fossilized swamp cypress trees preserved from 8 million years ago which could provide clues about the climate of pre-historic times.
Instead of petrifying -- turning to stone -- the wood of 16 Taxodium trees was preserved in an open-cast coal mine allowing geologists to study samples as if they were sections cut from a piece of living wood.
"The importance of the findings is that so many trees got preserved in their original position in one place," Alfred Dulai, geologist at the Hungarian Natural History Museum said.
"But the real rarity about these trees is that ... their original wood got preserved ... they did not turn into stone."
The trees, which stand 4-6 meters tall and 1.5-3 meters in diameter, were found when miners started to remove a deep layer of sand at a mine in the north-eastern village of Bukkabrany to get at deposits of lignite.
The trees date back to the late Miocene geological period at a time when the Carpathian basin -- present day Hungary -- was a freshwater lake surrounded by swamps.
The trees were found on top of the lignite, capturing one of the last moments of these swamps, Dulai said.
"But the real rarity about these trees is that ... their original wood got preserved ... they did not turn into stone."
Fascinating fossilized trees
Bald Cypress
(Taxodium distichum)
Native Range: The native range of Bald Cypress extends along the lower Atlantic Coastal Plain from southern Delaware to southern Florida and thence along the lower Gulf Coast Plain to southeastern Texas. Further south Bald Cypress a distinctive population of Bald Cypress ranges throughout most of Mexico. Inland, Bald Cypress grows along the many streams of the middle and upper coastal plains and northward through the Mississippi Valley to southeastern Oklahoma, southeastern Missouri, southern Illinois, and southwestern Indiana. (Silvics of North America. 1990. Agriculture Handbook 654.)
Note: The trees referred to in the posted article are NOT FOSSILIZED.
That’s weird looking.
Interesting article...
8 million year old wood!
What would it sound like if you made a guitar out of it!
More pics, this time of the “Petrified Forest” in Yellowstone: http://www.nps.gov/archive/yell/slidefile/geology/paleontology/Page.htm
...And here I’ve been bragging about my 7,000 year old wood.
http://www.ancientkauri.co.nz/index.php/extract_raw_logs/photos_extract_kauri
Reminds me of the New Zealand Swamp Kauri, preserved, estimated to be around 40,000 YO.
Interesting slide show images.
Wow...how cool is that! This statistic speaks for itself: “Ancient Kauri Kingdom has extracted the largest log ever found - a whopping 23 metres (75’) long, 11.3m (37’) girth, weighing approximately 140 tonnes.”
I’ve been to the one in AZ but the memory is getting foggy these days. It was a long time ago. Pretty interesting stuff.
Weren’t you supposed to call your doctor after 4 hours?
IMO your piece of wood has much more chance of being 7,000 YO than the Hungarian find being anywhere NEAR the age it is claimed to be...
btw, I read again recently that the first wood discovered on the Antarctic continent was also UNFOSSILIZED and BURNED as fuel...however, there were no standing trees discovered, they were all snapped off at ground level.
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050404antarctic-fossil.htm
“...From a catastrophist point of view, there are many questions raised by the Antarctic forest. How accurate is the system by which the trees were dated? Was late Permian really 260 million years ago? Geologists consider this figure accurate, along with the “known” age of the Earth. And it’s all backed by absolute radiometric dating techniques. Fifty years ago, they were equally confident of a different age, and another age fifty years before that. But this time they’re sure they’ve got it right...”
[rimshot!]
:’D
a fossilized Nothofagus tree trunk in the Antarctic.
He found a particularly large "rock"; had to go get the loader to dig it out...it was a very LARGE 4-ft long, 2+ ft. dia. part of a petrified tree trunk. He moved it to a safe place for storage..not sure if I should sell it or put it in the garden.
that’s bound to be one of many more...you may have a treasure-trove buried on your farm.
Images from Petrified Forest National Park:
http://www.terragalleria.com/parks/np.petrified-forest.all.html
A fossil tree trunk in the Lybian Desert?
http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/libya/Sud_libyen_pg01.html
And in Argentina:
http://www.australaddr.com/patagonia/petrified_forests.htm
On the island of Lesvos:
http://www.windmillstravel.com/article.php?id=146&destination=17&destinationtype=island
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