Found while highbanking

[MontanaLon]

Dug this out from under a boulder in a river. It actually wouldn't wash out of the hopper and the crystalline structure caught my eye. Picked it up and it is very heavy so I brought it home to see what I could find in the books that was similar. Nothing was similar.

The color is a bit off in the photos. What looks like mustard yellow is rust red. The silvery "veiny" part is actually more golden.

It is non-magnetic and very hard. A picture is worth a thousand years so here are 3,000 words.





Any ideas what it is?

 

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[ticm]

Petrified wood.

 

[PYRATE]

I don't recall petrified wood being very heavy, but it does look like it.

According to a couple of websites I just found, petrified wood has a specific gravity of 2.6 - 3.5 so it seems that it would have washed out with the other lighter materials, but perhaps this piece has a higher quantity of metals.

Can you cut it to see if there are any growth rings?

 

[CoinFetcher]

yes, you should be able to cut it, and see rings.

Looks like Wood to me, and I have found a lot of it.

It's washington's state gem! and my name

 

[MontanaLon]

Petrified wood.

yes, you should be able to cut it, and see rings.
Looks like Wood to me, and I have found a lot of it.
It's washington's state gem! and my name

It isn't wood. It is metal and the veining is present all through the rest of the piece. Well at least in the other areas I cut it is there.

I guess I should say this came from a river that is fed by streams that cut across glacial moraine in central Illinois that has a little bit of everything in it mineral wise. I find everything but gold usually. Lots of fossils, lots of iron, lots of pyrite. It is an interesting place to prospect with my 5 year old as we never know what we are going to find. Sometimes we just chase frogs and minnows and thats cool too. He always wants to go "Gold Rushing" but we both seem to enjoy just being together and outside more than back breaking work.

 

[pirataborracho]

Petrified wood.

I second that.

 

[MontanaLon]

Got the possibility it may be Acanthite. Silver Sulfide. Woooot. my first good find.

 

[nuggy]

Do you have a detector you can try this with? Be interesting to find out what it is....... Nuggy

 

[Gunrunner61]

Does it react to a magnet? Kinda looks like petrified wood , But it also looks like a really rusted Iron shaft thats had the rust blasted off of it.......

 

[MontanaLon]

Does it react to a magnet? Kinda looks like petrified wood , But it also looks like a really rusted Iron shaft thats had the rust blasted off of it.......

Absolutely no reaction to a magnet. Even the finest filings off it have zero reaction.

 

[Edgenation]

Petrified wood! I can see the growth lines.

 

[inspectorgadget]

Figure it out yet? Petrified wood can be very heavy! A large (24" across & about 15" tall) piece of petrified tree trunk my uncle had easily weighed as much as a similar sized piece of solid granite.