The United States is located on the American continent, sparsely populated, in its south there is an endless desert area, which straddles Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona, and 350 kilometers away from here, it is located in the United States Petrified Forest National Park, which is also the world's largest silicified wood forest.
Here, after the great changes in the mulberry fields, towering trees can be turned into gems, and these tree gems have existed for nearly 240 million years. Hundreds of millions of years ago, this area was not a desert, and it was once a vast forest dominated by coniferous forests.
In this forest, some trees can grow to more than 70 meters high, and after these trees die and fall, they will experience different fates, and some will be washed by the river and carried to the swamp mud pond, gradually decomposed by bacteria, and finally decayed into nutrients that nourish the land.
Some trees will enter the natural circulation system and become a traditional energy source such as coal; other trees will be quickly buried by volcanic ash deposition, and after a series of changes, they will eventually form silicified wood silicified wood.
This process is very wonderful, the trees wrapped in volcanic ash in the high temperature and high pressure environment, the sediment in the silica and other substances will gradually penetrate into the trees, the organic components in the trees began to be replaced by silica.
Silica is gradually deposited in the cells of plants, but does not destroy the cell morphology of plants, through the equipment can still observe the complete cell morphology and special texture of trees, although it is a tree, but because of the composition of silica in the fossil is more, so it is named silicified wood.
Towering trees can really become gemstones after a series of changes, and if they encounter volcanic high temperature hydrothermal infestation again in the later stage, a large number of metal ion minerals will penetrate into the trees, and after cooling, due to different formation conditions and temperatures, gemstones of different colors and textures will be formed.
Such gemstones include crystal clear crystals, large pieces of jasper, shiny agate, in addition to the national petrochemical forest park in the United States is more complete varieties of silicified wood, the mainland is also very rich in silicified wood gemstones. The Beijing Museum of Natural History once shipped a batch of precious silicified wood gemstones from Liaoning Beipiao.
The length of these silicified woods ranges from 4 meters to more than 10 meters, the coarsest silicified wood can reach a diameter of more than one meter, the thin ones are also 0.4 meters, and the most precious thing is that they also contain a batch of agate silicified wood gemstones.
After the identification of scientists, the types of silicified wood are divided into six types: Hebei exotic wood, broad-hole exotic wood, cypress-shaped wood and so on. Its formation dates back to about 173 million years ago in the late Jurassic Period.
At present, silicified wood can be found in ancient temples, garden parks, and natural museums in the north and south of the mainland, and in recent years, silicified wood has become a hot collection among gem collectors.
There are also two more than 20-meter-long silicified wood fossils in Dashanpu, Zigong City, Sichuan Province, which are more special, although they have gone through hundreds of millions of years, but in addition to the trunk remaining intact, the branches have also been completely preserved.
Shenzhen's Xianhu Botanical Garden collects nearly a thousand silicified woods collected from all over the world, and the staff erected the longer silicified wood on the open ground, forming a spectacular silicified wood jungle, which has become a veritable silicified wood museum.
Precious agate silicified wood has also been found in the northwestern part of the mainland; in addition to some rare or huge silicified woods in the Beijing Natural History Museum, several pieces of silicified wood have been polished and polished, allowing visitors to more intuitively observe the internal structure of silicified wood.
At present, most of the silicified wood in China is from Beipiao City, Liaoning Province, and Beipiao is also famous in the scientific community because of animal and plant fossils, where early mammals, reptiles, fish, insect fossils and so on have been found.
As early as 226 million to 0.66 billion years ago, the warm climate, dense vegetation, complex flora and fauna, and frequent volcanic activity in Beipiao also made it possible to excavate so many fossils of animals and plants in the local area, making this small northern city a place of great concern to the paleontological community.
It's amazing how trees can change into gemstones.
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