How to Identify Fossil (Petrified) Wood - Page 4 of 5
By Ed Strauss, Washington (photos and content)

The first part seems easy. We can easily tell a "hardwood", flower bearing, angiosperm from a "softwood", cone bearing, gymnosperm. That is because I have only shown you good examples of easily distinguishable specimens. Now lets look at these examples:

Figure 5

Figure 6

The first specimen (figure 5) does not have large vessels, but they are certainly not uniform and lined up in vertical rows. It is a hardwood with small vessels. It does not have wide rays but it does have rays which are wider than conifers. The second specimen (figure 6) looks like a toss up; is it a conifer or hardwood? The answer is; it is a hardwood, but to make sure we need higher magnification. Often times after examining a specimen with a hand lens the results are inconclusive. That is why it is usually necessary to review the specimen after it has been prepared with lapidary equipment either into a cube or a thin sectioned microscope slide.

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