Our featured specimen

​Primitive Conifer (Araucarioxylon arizonicum)
Chinle Formation, Triassic
Patton Ranch, near Holbrook, Arizona
** This  incredibly beautiful slab comes from the Patton Ranch which is located immediately adjacent to the west boundary of the Petrified Forest National Park.  Consequently, it has exactly the same mineralization as the deposits in the park that are called “Rainbow Forest beds,” an apt name for wood this colorful.  Rich yellows and reds predominate but the black, purple and white accents make the whole thing truly a rainbow of color.  Slices of this quality are definitely not what one would call the "run of the mill" Rainbow Forest slabs - they are the "cream of the crop" and "top shelf" specimens that advanced collectors seek to add to their collections.  The colors and their extraordinary variety make the difference -- along with a pleasant pattern created by those colors.  It is simply a gorgeous piece of wood from (perhaps) America’s most classic locality.  You'll want to be looking at this every day for that pick-me-up that we can all use right now!
10” x 9" on polished face; 5/8” thick slab   $350
(immediately qualifies for our discount on purchases of $200 or more)

Sycamore (Platanus sp.)
Little Butte Formation, Mehama volcanics unit, Oligocene
McQueen Ranch, Sweet Home area, Linn County, Oregon
**  Black and white beauty!  The McQueen Ranch has not produced petrified wood for quite a long time, but a recent logging operation and the attendant soil disruption has produced some really nice specimens and we thing we got some of the best!  The ranch is directly across the road from the famed Holleywood Ranch which has consistently produced enormous amounts of petrified wood, but the two neighboring sites could not be more different in mineralization.  While the Holleywood site has produced mainly tan to rust colored specimens, the material found recently at the McQueen is black with with incredibly handsome agate patterning.  This sycamore is one of the examples of this material.  When the logging operation is complete and the trees begin to regrow, there won't be any more petrified wood discovered for a considerable period of time.  So, if you like the striking patterns produced by this lovely material we suggest you acquire a specimen for your own collection before it is all gone - we did!
5.5" x 3.75" on polished face; 3/8" thick slab  $65

Bald Cypress (Taxodium sp.)
Upper Miocene
Eoulx-Brenon, near Castellane, France
**  This has been definitely a new and unique locality for us.  I've asked some of our European friends if they had heard of it and one particularly studious collector provided us with a 1967 paper on the locality.  We acquired the material in 2018 at Tucson and the label mysteriously noted that it was from the collection of "C.P." but the dealer did not want to elaborate more about the person.  We were assured of the provenance information.  The tiny villages of Eoulx and Brenon are just a few kilometers to the east of Castellane, the town that bears the same name as the Castellane Commune (the smallest administrative territorial division in France - roughly commensurate with a county here in the USA).)  Geologically, both communities sit on a thrust fault that exposes strata of a Tertiary sedimentary foreland basin, created by subduction of the North African Plate under the European Plate. These foreland basins are exceptionally complex geological structures in the French Alps - they have long been one of the most fascinating puzzles of French Geology.  Some have recently been described as sand-rich, turbidite submarine ramps fed by multiple-source fan deltas - an environment that definitely had an impact on the petrification of wood.  That would match up nicely with the conglomerate described in the 1967 paper.  The villages of Eoulx and Brenon are connected by the Torrent d' Eoulx, Torrent being the French word for a rushing stream.

This log likely was swept into the sea by a major flood event that immediately buried the log under sand on that submarine ramp (the ancient Mediterranean Sea is called the Tethys Sea by geologists).  Sand may not have been able to deliver silica into the log as quickly as perhaps a volcanic ash could have, but we are still fortunate that preservation took place in the outer half of the log.  The inner half may well have already been subjected to heart rot before being swept by the flood because it has no visible structural preservation of the anatomy.  One of the interesting microscopic features of this slab is the presence of leaf traces (actually the trace of the leaf petiole) which appear sporadically in some of the growth cycles.  This may have been the result of leaf propagation in the trunk or branch when weather conditions were particularly conducive to vigorous growth.  See our photomicrograph for a view of some of the leaf traces among the tracheids of this slab.  While they first appear to be large, odd-shaped resin canals, they are indeed leaf petiole traces. 

If you wish to read more about the complex geology of the region you can access a PDF of a very comprehensive article here:
https://sp.lyellcollection.org/content/specpubgsl/221/1/1.full.pdf
To download the 1967 paper on wood from this locality see:
https://www.persee.fr/doc/linly_0366-1326_1967_num_36_7_5940
The paper is in French but Google Translate does a good job of converting it into readable English.
5" x 3" on the polished face; 1/2" thick slab  $79

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