Dendritic Crystal Growth

Sometimes these are considered pseudofossils but they are manganese oxides - dendritic crystal growth.  This specimen was found in Solnhofen, Bayern, Germany.  It is on display at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History (2010).

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.