How long does it take to petrify wood?

Question

My family found a new petrifired log only covered with about 10" of spagnum moss, but leaning against the 100' by 30" through, rock log was a D handle shovel.It was 2/3s petrified. We left it as we found it, and I am sorry I do not still have a reasonable explanation to this. Have the tecnical Sciences not seen this happen yet? Id like a true answer to New Petrified wood, not burried or moved, and deep in an unlogged area.

Answer 1

Well, define petrified. The process of petrification requires that the wood be protected from rotting and access by bugs that chew on it and then requires that chemicals be present that invade the still intact wood cells and replace the liquids there with silica based products. Sometime during this process, obviously the wood is a quishy substance. It is unlikely that the stuff you found was "petrified" in that it was rock - more likely it was waterlogged and preserved with tannin from the moss. What is 2/3's petrified? 1/3 wood - 2/3's rock?
Logs lost in logging operations in the southern U.S. have been recovered, dried out and cut for lumber, but they are not "petrified".
The actual process of petrification probably takes from a few hundred years under absolutely perfect conditions to thousands of years under common conditions. Once petrified, trees are often enclosed in sandstone and compressing that and eroding it may take eons.

Answer 2

Petrified wood is a type of fossil: it consists of fossil wood where all the organic materials have been replaced with minerals (most often a silicate, such as quartz), while retaining the original structure of the wood. The petrifaction process occurs underground, when wood becomes buried under sediment. Mineral-rich water flowing through the sediment deposits minerals in the plant's cells and as the plant's lignin and cellulose decay away, a stone mold forms in its place. The wood is preserved due to a lack of oxygen. Elements such as manganese, iron and copper in the water/mud during the petrification process give petrified wood a variety of color ranges. Pure quartz crystals are colorless, but when contaminants are added to the process the crystals take on a yellow, red or other tint. The process requires millions of years. Following is a list of contaminating elements and related color hues: carbon - black cobalt - green/blue chromium - green/blue copper - green/blue iron oxides - red, brown, yellow manganese - pink/orange manganese oxides - black Petrified wood can preserve the original structure of the wood in all its detail, down to the microsopic level. Structures such as tree rings and the various tissues are often observed features. Petrified wood has a hardness of 7, the same as quartz. If it is a 'Cross' then it could not be older than two thousand years for very obvious reason. Now read further- Artificial petrified wood Artificial petrified wood has been produced in a Washington lab. 1) First Method--In the process small cubes of pine were soaked in an acid bath for two days then in a silica solution for another two. The product was then cooked at 1400 °C in an argon atmosphere for two hours. The result was silicon carbide ceramic which preserved the intricate cell structure of the wood. Soaking in a tungsten solution produced a tungsten carbide petrified wood. 2) Second method--Researchers have also made wood-ceramic composites that are 20–120% harder than regular wood, but still look like wood. Surprisingly simple, the process involves soaking wood in a solution containing silicon and aluminium compounds. The solution fills the pores in the wood, which is then oven-cured at 44°C. According to the lab’s research director, Daniel Dobbs, such experiments have impregnated the wood to depths of about 5 millimetres Furthermore, deeper penetration under pressure and curing at higher temperature have yielded a rock-hard wood-ceramic composite that has approached petrified wood. Now you can judge the genuineness of the cross you have.

Answer 3

It would depend on the environment and the type of wood and the processes of petrification.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrified_wood