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Fossil wood, also known as fossilized tree, is wood that is preserved in the fossil record. Over time the wood will usually be the part of a plant that is best preserved (and most easily found). Fossil wood may or may not be petrified, in which case it is known as petrified wood or petrified tree.
The water in the fossil itself also needs to be replaced. As soon as the slab bearing the fossil is worked free from the rock, it is submerged in water to stop it from cracking. This involves packing it in plastic and sometimes wet newspaper. While in the wet state, it is cleaned up and all preparation needed for the transfer conducted. [15]
Plant fossils can be preserved in a variety of ways, each of which can give different types of information about the original parent plant. These modes of preservation may be summarised in a paleobotanical context as follows. Adpressions (compressions – impressions). These are the most commonly found type of plant fossil.
Plant macrofossils include leaf, needle, cone, and stem debris; and can be used to identify types of plants formerly growing in the area. Such botanical macrofossil data provide a valuable complement to pollen and faunal data that can be used to reconstruct the prehistoric terrestrial environment.
Tree remains that have undergone petrifaction, as seen in Petrified Forest National Park. In geology, petrifaction or petrification (from Ancient Greek πέτρα (pétra) 'rock, stone') is the process by which organic material becomes a fossil through the replacement of the original material and the filling of the original pore spaces with minerals.
The horizons of fossil soils typically are sharply defined only in the top layers, unless some of the parent material has not been obliterated by soil formation. The kinds of horizons in fossil soils are generally the same as those found in present-day soils, allowing easy classification in modern taxonomy of all but the oldest soils.
In some instances, the original structure of the stem tissue may be partially retained. Unlike other plant fossils, which are typically impressions or compressions, petrified wood is a three-dimensional representation of the original organic material. The petrifaction process occurs underground, when wood becomes buried in water or volcanic ash.
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