What’s that stuff? Petrified wood
Sarah Braner · C&EN Global Enterprise · 2024
Fossilization is an invaluable process for gaining a window into the past, but it can also create a tripping hazard. The way Angela Piller, collections manager at the Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks and Minerals, tells it, Mary Murphy was on a dig for petrified wood when she stepped out of her camper and promptly tripped over a pinecone. A regular pinecone wouldn’t be nearly heavy enough to actually make someone take a tumble, but this was no ordinary pinecone: this sample was millions of years old and had been turned to stone by minerals, water, and time. Murphy and her husband, Dennis, from whom the majority of the museum’s petrified wood collection is loaned, were avid collectors of petrified wood. But “she never ever would have noticed [the pinecone],” unless she stumbled over it, Piller says. “It doesn’t look like anything different. It would just blend in with any