Specimen of the Month: Petrified from Wyoming to Drummond

Just over two months ago, I trekked over a much different landscape than today's muted, cold, sometimes slushy ground. It was less than a half hour east of Buffalo, Wyoming near the foothills of the Big Horn Mountains (or just shy of a thousand miles west of Cable, depending on your perspective). The lumpy hills of rust red to bone white made me feel like I was on the surface of Mars, if not for the yellow-blooming silver sagebrush and hairy gumplant obscuring the narrow footpath established at the Dry Creek Petrified Tree Environmental Education Area. The area felt desolate, dry, and in less than a mile my partner and I were baked in the heat. But I had forced the detour off the interstate to see petrified trees, and after our stop I was glad that I had done so. 

Dry Creek was a chance find when scouting out trip locations, 
and its obscurity made for a welcomed opportunity to 
fully immerse ourselves in the experience of the landscape.

It's hard to imagine a time tens of millions of years ago, when the same location where dusty hills now stood was once a "jungle-like swamp with towering Metasequoia trees." Then again, this was a testament to the fact that fossils take time. 

Petrified wood occurs under special circumstances. It is a type of fossilized remains - of plants rather than animals - which died during the time of dinosaurs. Imagine giant, prehistoric metasequoias (or reference dawn redwoods, a contemporary species, here and here) dying and eventually collapsing into decay. Most of these trees would have naturally decomposed. Some, however, became fossilized when natural phenomena first allow mud, ash, or other sediments to cover the tree. Over a long period of time, that organic material was replaced by dissolved solids which filtered in from groundwater and were deposited to create a fossil. These fossils demonstrate the same shape and patterning of the ancient wood that once was.

This fossilized metasequoia trunk is the largest exhibit of petrified wood at Dry Creek, 
but other fossilized stumps also pepper the landscape.

So, how do we connect petrified wood from Wyoming to Drummond, Wisconsin? Back in 2008 when the Museum's specimen collection was still growing rapidly, almost 40 geological specimens were donated to us from the Drummond Historical Museum. Their first director, Gordon G. Sorenson, had apparently been an avid collector of rocks and fossils including agates, native copper, and some petrified wood. 

Gordon G. Sorenson authored the Drummond Centennial, 1882-1982,
during his time with the Drummond Historical Museum. 

I admittedly haven't located more information regarding Sorenson's geology collection, or the origin of his petrified wood specimens. Whether these specimens were collected in Wisconsin is unknown, though I don't tend to consider our state to have a rich stock of petrified wood, or fossils in general. Still, I find each piece to be an artistically fascinating connection to our planet's storied history of geologic phenomena and the resulting shifting landscapes beneath our feet. 

If any readers have more information on Gordon Sorenson's geology collections, send me an email at mollie@cablemuseum.org. Our community knowledge always helps me to connect the dots!