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Size : 41 x 19 x 3 mm
Weight: 20 cts
Indonesian Petrified Wood With Opal is from ancient teak (hardwood) trees that turned to stone. is from trees approximately 20 million years old. Minerals present in the mud and water prior to and during the petrification process leached into the wood giving it color.
Petrified Wood comes from the Greek root petro, which means rock or stone, with literal meaning ‘wood turned into stone'. It's the name given to the fossilized remains of terrestrial vegetation.
Petrified Wood with Opal was first found as pebbles and larger rounded stones in streams and near the slopes of three volcanoes in region of Indonesia's Garut, West Java Province, nearly 300km away from Soekarno-Hatta airport. The source deposit was finally located on the steep slopes of Mt. Tjikolak almost 30 years ago, and going popular into public around 2017. What the miners actually found was an ancient petrified forest, which had been pushed over by the deluge of pyroclastic flow from a volcanic explosion. Then, over the ages, the wood was fossilized and preserved by opaline silica. In short explanation, all those fallen trees on the slope after the eruption of mountain, covered with other layers of the debris of thousands of years in the future.
Secondly, a volcanic eruption, ejecting not lava, but ash, covering them with a layer of up to 800 meters. Diluted in water with other sediments and mineral components, this “soup” begins to slowly penetrate these trunks.
Depending on their porosity, this mixture of ash and sediments penetrates them in varying amounts, at varying depths, making use of the vascular tissues made up of hollow cells allowing the sap to flow through. Amongst the resinous trees, these vessels are tracheids which are linked to parenchyma, fundamental tissue contributing to the efficient flow of nutrients.
Fossilised trees therefore no longer contain wood, but are now made up of Micro crystalline quartz hydrates. This phenomenon is called silicification, calcedonisation or opalisation. A few cavities are even filled with agate, amethyst or citrine. It is then a Pseudomorphosis.
Earthquakes broke them into logs of around 1metre long. Whilst exposed to the elements, their surface starts to crack, the percolated fluids and the roots distort them, the air oxides their colours. Those on the surface eventually become sand (arenisation) over a variable period. Those trunks still submerged remain protected. Erosion (wind and rain) reveals the hidden trees during the Triassic period.
The journey of each tree, the state of each trunk, their story is unique, which is what explains how their colours can be so different, even between two trunks found very close to each other on one site. The chemical components carried by the water mixed to ash, a sedimentary matter solution, gave them their colour, in several stages. Iron for example was first to filter into the tree, which produced the reds (rust). Manganese (purple) and copper (bleu) filtered in much later into the denser parts.
So many other gorgeous petrified wood gemstone varieties are available to us now–some on a very limited basis. Every day it is getting harder to find gem-quality petrified wood cabs. By using these gemstones, these fragments of the ancient world in our work, we bring a bit of history and mystery into our 21st-century creations. It makes the work of Indonesian Petrified Wood very different, collectable