12.5" Chinle BLACK FOREST Petrified Wood Round - Arizona Pullisilvaxylon!

This may be the single most interesting and collectible of all of the magnificent Arizona petrified wood slabs that we've ever offered. The high contrast black with mineral veins is attractive and the shape is very nice, but the real fascination in this piece is the story it has to tell. It comes from an exposure in the vast southwestern US petrified wood deposits from the Chinle Formation dubbed the Black Forest. The name source is somewhat obvious, but less well known is that specimens from the Black Forest were what was first described from the Arizona petrified forests over a century ago that have created one of the better known debates within the scientific community of paleobotanists! I'll share a bit of that story further into the description, but the short version is that I believe this slab is actually from one of the species that was originally described as Araucarioxylon arizonicum by Knowlton in 1889. That detail alone would make this a nice collector specimen, but it