One of the Oldest Petrified Woods

This Callixylon newberryi plant fossil is of the late Devonian period.  Fossils like this are considered some of the oldest petrified woods in the world.  This piece was found in Bullitt County, Kentucky in the New Albany Shale.

See this post for pictures of larger section of fossil wood on display at the Indiana State Museum.  Also this post about a really large fossil trunk on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.  The Kentucky Paleontological Society has a very nicely prepared and photographed magnified sample seen here.

Below are pictures of the fossil shown at the beginning of this post.  It is a magnified view of a cut and polished section of one end.

 The next slide shows it magnified at 100x.  Need to find a way to fix the camera to the microscope so I can stack images to improve the overall image quality!

This last slide shows a 100x magnification of the long grain view of the wood.

Calymene Update Part 3

Not a lot of work since the last time.  A large section of matrix was removed along one side of the thorax.  Started using a polishing wheel on the Dremel tool to make the brown parts shiny.  Used the needle tool to clean small lines of matrix on thorax and cephalon.

Used Helicon Focus to process these images.

Fibrous or Needlelike Mineral Growth in Orthospirifer

While sorting Devonian brachiopod specimens for upcoming posts on beekite and internal coral growths I came across this oddity.  It appears to be a needlelike or fibrous mineral that grew inside the fossil. 

Looking at the list of Indiana minerals that are needlelike are: aragonite (calcium carbonate), strontianite (strontium carbonate --RARE), and geotite (iron oxide in water).  Indiana minerals that are fibrous are gypsum (calcium sulphate in water).  So I think it is either gypsum or aragonite.  Any suggestions as to what mineral this might be?

The material does not respond to long or short wave UV.

This Orthospirifer brachiopod was found in the Jeffersonville Limestone of Clark County, Indiana.

Additional photographs show specimen plus it magnified 20x with a loupe, 40x & 100x with a microscope.