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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.
Although they are small, melt inclusions may contain a number of different constituents, including glass (which represents magma that has been quenched by rapid cooling), small crystals and a separate vapour-rich bubble. They occur in most of the crystals found in igneous rocks and are common in the minerals quartz, feldspar, olivine and pyroxene.
Rhizoliths are organosedimentary structures formed in soils or fossil soils by plant roots. They include root moulds, casts, and tubules, root petrifactions, and rhizocretions. Rhizoliths, and other distinctive modifications of carbonate soil texture by plant roots, are important for identifying paleosols in the post-Silurian geologic record.
In soil science the definition differs slightly: paleosols are soils formed long ago that have no relationship in their chemical and physical characteristics to the present-day climate or vegetation. Such soils are found within extremely old continental cratons, or in small scattered locations in outliers of other ancient rock domains.
Soil fossils are usually classified by USDA soil taxonomy. With the exception of some exceedingly old soils which have a clayey, grey-green horizon that is quite unlike any present soil and clearly formed in the absence of O 2 , most fossil soils can be classified into one of the twelve orders recognised by this system.
Specifically in sedimentology, a bed can be defined in one of two major ways. [2] First, Campbell [3] and Reineck and Singh [4] use the term bed to refer to a thickness-independent layer comprising a coherent layer of sedimentary rock, sediment, or pyroclastic material bounded above and below by surfaces known as bedding planes.
The fossil record and faunal succession form the basis of the science of biostratigraphy or determining the age of rocks based on embedded fossils. For the first 150 years of geology , biostratigraphy and superposition were the only means for determining the relative age of rocks.
Soil formation is influenced by at least five classic factors that are intertwined in the evolution of a soil. They are: parent material, climate, topography (relief), organisms, and time. [9] When reordered to climate, organisms, relief, parent material, and time, they form the acronym CLORPT. [10]