RyanJLea said:
Hi, I found this fossil a few miles down the road in some pits. It has fossils on one side, and when cracked into it has all what I can presume is wood. It feels like wood, and is very smooth and can break off in flakes. You can see in the pictures I have posted with this. Wondering what it is, how old and what should I do with it. I Know you can get fossilised wood, but this doesn't seem fossilised, even though it was within a case of fossils...
Some speculation is presented here just based on what you said about the flakes. More reliable analysis would require more background information. For instance, it would be nice to know what type of pits you are referring to.
There are many fossils that retain much of the original material and structure of the original organism. Sometimes, minerals get added to the remains of the organism but the original material isn't gone. Furthermore, sometimes the petrification of the remains is so complete that the structure remains even though all the organic material is gone. Ligonization is one way to preserve the form of an organism without replacement of material.
Maybe it is a plant that was ligonized. Ligonization is when the organic material has been reduced to charcoal-like remains. The organic material is usually reduced to charcoal by heat. The heat could be from a surface fire or geothermal heat from deep within the earth. I prefer the word "ligonized" to "carbonized", since coal and charcoal are much more complicated than pure carbon in any form.
If the plant was reduced to charcoal by whatever means, it would retain much of the structure though it would be more brittle. Maybe that is why it flakes so easily.
The plant could be a recent plant that was burned in the pit. On the other hand, it could be a prehistoric plant that could be considered a true fossil.
The best way to preserve ligonized plants are by immersion in alcohol. One you uncover a plant reduced to charcoal, the air is bound to degrade it.
Consider the possibility that it isn't a plant. The fossil that you found could be the fossil remains of an animal.
I have collected paleozoic brachiopod fossils that flake exactly the way you are describing. Brachiopods (example: lamp shells) are animals with shells that superficially resemble the shells of bivalve mollusks (i.e., clams and oysters). However, the structure of brachiopod shells are rather flaky.
The picture that you showed doesn't look like a brachiopod. However, corals very often look like plants. There are marine animals that may look like that.
One of the pictures that you showed looks like a bryozoan colony. That is an animal whose colonies resemble coral colonies, but whose form is more like a brachiopod.
Again, fossils do not always consist of material that has replaced the organic material. Sometimes, the organic material persists in "cooked" form.
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