Short Stuff: Petrified Wood | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW

[Music]. hey and welcome to the short stuff I'm. Josh Chuck Jerry Dave Spirit go hey can. I give a the quickest music shout. out um making this longer yes I guess I. know it's a shorty but I just quickly. want to say I went to see mud honey last. night mhm sure and boy oh boy if uh mud. Honey comes through your town on this. tour and you have any love for that band.

from the old days go go go okay these. guys just blistered you for 28 songs MH. like it was. 1995 W and threw their stuff down and. Mark arm went to the mic and said we. still mud honey and they got out of. there and it. was amazing it blew me away and my. expect expectations are already high so. but you can tell that they're aged. because he was like this microphone's.

too expensive for me to drop here it was. so he really thought that through God. those guys are killer good good good. shout out Chuck they petrified my ears. how about that for a segue oh that's a. good one because we're talking about. petrified wood so that's like a perfect. segue I don't know if you knew that or. not this was a good guess so petrified. wood whenever I think of that I think of. like the Petrified Forest and I always. just thought it was like really hard. wood I knew the deal yeah so wrong and I. should know this cuz we did a really.

great episode on fossils but what. petrified wood is it's just fossilized. wood rather than a old crusty tribit or. something like that it's an old crusty. tree that's now mineral not wood yeah. yeah it's pretty remarkable uh it it's. you know it's what happens when the. organic stuff within a tree and not. always a tree but any kind of uh like. Woody material but we like to think of. trees when we talk about petrified. things yeah.

uh but this stuff is you know it's. fossilized from the inside out and it's. replaced by minerals uh a lot of times. very heavy in silica uh and that process. is called uh per. mineralization and it usually takes. millions of years but as we'll see in a. second sometimes it can happen in. decades or hundreds of years given the. right conditions my friend I saw that it. can happen according to one study whoa. wait a minute two days found between 7.

and 36 years is the fastest I've ever. found seven years I mean like that's. incredible you might have a job as long. as it takes for this thing to be. petrified and then you move on somewhere. else and the trees's already petrified. you know yeah so here's the deal usually. when a tree dies it rots uh it. decomposes and it just decays you know. like we've talked about in plenty of. times before microorganisms get in there. break all that stuff down and it. eventually just becomes part of the. Earth again right uh sometimes though a.

tree might fall and very very quickly uh. it is buried over by something that. Shields it from oxygen whether it be. volcanic ash or mud or silt or something. like that or mud honey or very nice uh. but that it gets buried under that such. that it cuts it away cuts it off from. oxygen oxygen is the big factor in that. uh natural rot Decay and so if that's. not around all of a sudden it's.

decomposing really really slowly and so. slowly that those minerals that it's. buried in can seep in yeah and those. minerals are really important because if. you don't have minerals what you end up. with is coal and then eventually. diamonds right yeah like the the. decomposition is going to happen one way. or another it's just going to take much. longer without oxygen if you have. minerals however though those minerals. that Min mineral rich like mud or water. whatever that's present can start to. seep into that that dead tree right mhm.

gets in the pores it gets in all the. nooks and crannies and the vascular. stuff and all that and as that rot. happens as the tree itself actually. decays what remains is that hardened. mineral usually silica which eventually. over time forms quartz and because it's. filled up those pores so completely even. though there's the trees itself is not. left any longer a mineral.

rock version of that tree is Left Behind. that's a petrified tree yeah and you. know we mentioned that it takes a very. very long time normally but you said as. little as seven years and that is either. one or two or both things happen either. the tree. uh everything is basically sped up. either the tree uh is buried very very. fast instead of more slowly by this. stuff and it's cut off from that oxygen. much much quicker uh or if there's just.

tons and tons and tons of the mineral. instead of just sort of a regular amount. right I say we take a break and come. back and talk a little more about. petrified wood how about that let's do. [Music]. it.

so Chuck I'm not sure if you uh remember. or not but we're talking petrified wood. and we just explained how it works okay. so um there are places in this world. that just have the right conditions um. for petrified wood to have formed uh and. there's a bunch of them in the United. States most famously there's a very. large National Park fossil forest. petrified forest in Yellowstone which is. pretty cool but but if you allow me to.

digress I found another one that I think. is even cooler it's in Montana which I. think that Yellowstone runs into Montana. too and it's called Gallatin National. Park and it's a Petrified Forest like. the real deal so in Yellowstone you got. a bunch of like petrified logs laying. around and what that is is evidence of. one way that that wood can become. petrified they they they basically. became covered by sediment and River. muck after falling into a river and.

going Downstream and basically clogging. up the mouth of the river or whatever. right MH at Gallatin it's a true. Petrified Forest because the trees are. still upright and were petrified in. place where they were growing and what's. even nuttier than that is because the. the site was so ripe for um creating. petrified wood it happened again and. again and again so what they found is. there was an ancient volcano that just.

kept covering the area in Ash every. sound makes yeah every several tens of. thousands or hundreds of thousands or. even millions of years and every time it. did that Forest became petrified and. little by little after you know one. forest was petrified a new Forest would. grow above it that would get petrified. and so on and so forth there's 2,000. vertical feet of petrified forest one on. top of the other in Gallatin in Montana. isn't that nuts that is unbelievable uh.

you can't there are laws you can't just. take that stuff out and take it home cuz. it looks awesome and if you're sitting. there thinking like all right this is. kind of cool but like kind of what's the. big deal guys well then you my friend. have never seen petrified wood because. petrified wood is amazing looking uh it. takes on colors because each mineral. will end up you know filling those pores. in that vascular system and turning that. wood uh so so you have the like the.

beautiful structure like when you cut a. cross-section of a tree and those. beautiful rings and the shapes the wavy. lines like that stuff remains but all of. a sudden it's green and it's uh red and. it looks amazing because you know. depending on the mineral it will give. you a different color and a different. shade and you polish that stuff up and. it looks like you know some kind of a. beautiful gemstone when it in fact it is. fossilized tree yeah it's pretty amazing. so you've got things like I think uh he. tight creates pink or red tints um.

Native iron creates the greenish color. pyite um good band name by the way. native iron sure totally um pyite. creates black shades um another thing. that you very frequently see is um. you'll see a petrified log and it I mean. it looks like a log the bark is all like. very clear it just looks like a log that. fell over um and but on the outside it's. sprinkled theer dust this is actually.

just little silica um coverage like. dustings of silica and again if you. picked up that log you'd be like this is. a really heavy log because it's not wood. any longer it's quartz and quartz is. much heavier than wood yeah pretty. amazing uh those forests that you. mentioned are the ones that are you know. uh well known for like having tons and. tons of like vertical structures but you. can find petrified wood all over the. world uh anywhere there's trees there's. probably you know going to be some. example of petrified wood that has been.

found there yeah and one other thing a. lot of times it looks like somebody came. along and chopped up the petrified wood. into. logs that actually happens because. they're so brittle um once they uh they. become fossilized any pressure from like. the Earth the movement of the Earth the. pressure from the dirt above them or. whatever can snap them and when they. snap they snap so cleanly it looks like. they were you know sawed oh wow yeah. pretty cool petrified wood amazing honey. amazing there you go we still short.

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