The Worlds only known Petrified Acorn.
Inyo
>From: in...@nospam.webriders.net (Web Riders)
>Date: 3 Apr 2000 00:19:06 -0500
><38e82787....@news2.newscene.com>
>I'm trying to determine If I have The Worlds only known Petrified
>Acorn. If you have or know of someone that has one of these let me
>know.
>To view this Marvel of Nature go to:
>www.webriders.net
Petrified acorns have been described from the Middle Miocene Yakima Canyon
Flora in Washington state. See the following link for more details:
Darren Garrison
Is it just me, or was that post NOT serious, but only a very thinly veiled bit of commercial spam
trying to drum up business for "Web Riders"?
Rick Toomey
The short answer is, no you do not have the world's only
known petrified acorn.
Taylor and Taylor (1993) show a picture of several fossil
acorns from a Miocene deposit. Stewart and Rothwell
1993, p. 480,482) note that "Quercus acorns and Fagus fruits
have also been found in other Eocene localities."
References cited
Stewart, W.N. and Rothwell, G.W., 1993, Paleobotany and the Evolution
of Plants. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 521pp.
Taylor, T.N. and Taylor, E.L., 1993, The Biology and Evolution
of Fossil Plants. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. 982pp.
Hope that helps,
Rick Toomey
Illinois State Museum
too...@museum.state.il.us
Una Smith
>I'm trying to determine If I have The Worlds only known Petrified
>Acorn.
[...]
>To view this Marvel of Nature go to:
>www.webriders.net
Probably not. Sorry! First, the ID of your specimen isn't very well
established by its external morphology. For a positive identification
you would need to have it cut. Whether someone with equipment for the
job (a thin diamond blade saw) would be willing to do the job for free
depends on the age of the specimen. How old is it? Where did you get
it? For a fee, a commercial specimen prep lab would gladly cut it for
you, no questions asked.
Second, acorns are the fruits (nuts) of the genus Quercus, a member of
the family Fagaceae. Fagaceae has a good fossil record, which includes
fossil fruits. Most of them are Tertiary though, and because I don't
keep a list of Tertiary fossil fruits, I can't say for sure without a
literature search that your specimen is or is not the first Quercus in
the Tertiary. But I would bet that it is not.
--
Una Smith una....@yale.edu
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Yale University
Una Smith
>>I'm trying to determine If I have The Worlds only known Petrified
>>Acorn.
>[...]
>>To view this Marvel of Nature go to:
>>www.webriders.net
Una Smith <una....@yale.edu> writes:
>Probably not.
[...]
> I can't say for sure without a
>literature search that your specimen is or is not the first Quercus in
>the Tertiary. But I would bet that it is not.
As others have posted, fossil acorns have been described from Miocene
formations. The question I addressed (or meant to address) in my last
article is one you didn't ask, but that is far more interesting: do
you have the *earliest* known acorn?
How old is your specimen, in geological terms? Where did you find it?
Una Smith
>>Taylor and Taylor (1993) show a picture of several fossil
>>acorns from a Miocene deposit. Stewart and Rothwell
>>1993, p. 480,482) note that "Quercus acorns and Fagus fruits
>>have also been found in other Eocene localities."
>>
>>References cited
>>
>>Stewart, W.N. and Rothwell, G.W., 1993, Paleobotany and the Evolution
>> of Plants. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 521pp.
>>
>>Taylor, T.N. and Taylor, E.L., 1993, The Biology and Evolution
>> of Fossil Plants. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. 982pp.
in...@nospam.webriders.net (Web Riders) writes:
>Thanks for the info. Do you know if there is a place on line to view
>these references or would they be readily available at the Library?
They are both college-level textbooks. Both still in print AFAIK.
Try interlibrary loan, if your local library doesn't have a copy of
either one.