Why is it illegal to own a piece of petrified wood?

Question

Someone told me that you can go to jail for having it in your possession if you're not like an organization or something. Why is that? And what makes it petrified?

Answer 1

Ive never heard it was illegal. If you have some go ahead and keep it.

not sure how it gets petrified.

Answer 2

its illegal?

Answer 3

First of all, it is not illegal to have petrified wood.  What is illegal is picking it up in certain areas.  

(Heck, if it were then I'd be in big trouble because we used to make microscope slides of it for practice when I was in paleobotany class!)

Here is a lot of information on petrified wood to answer all your questions on how it is made:

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

Answer 4

40 years ago as a small child I went to the American West to the petrified forest.

There you could buy small pieces of petrified wood.   I still have mine today, I am not an organization, or a criminal.

Petrified in this instance refers to the way it is preserved,or turned to stone.  I can't remember how that happened. But try to type in American petrified forest and see what you get for explanations.

I can tell you this, that the piece of tree I own is now a hard red rock, not a tree any more.

Answer 5

We were just in South Dakota. There is a place called, "The Petrified Forest", where you can see a lot of logs and parts of trees that have been petrified/fossilized. At this same site, they have lots of small pieces of the mineralized wood (petrified wood) you can buy. If it is illegal, I think this establishment would be shut down, rather than allowed to bring in tourists, advertise with signs on the main highway, etc. I think you cannot gather from some specific places, perhaps in a national park, etc. If you find a place to buy it or you find it in another location, then it would certainly seem that it would be the same as other fossils or rocks.

The process of the wood becoming "petrified" is actually the mineralization over a very long period of time - long enough to make fossil. As described in the little video at the PF in S. Dakota, they said that the wood might be in a swamp where it would not decompose too quickly. During the time it was underwater, the minerals within the water seeped into the wood and it eventually becomes mineralized - the wood cells are replaced by the minerals.