Clyde Friend is unearthing a forest that's more than 15 million years old from his Yakima area property. The trees, now petrified wood (a type of fossil), are rare for both their quality and variety.For the past five years, on this hillside above Yakima, Friend has been pulling out pieces of rare petrified wood, no two pieces alike. Branches, trunks and slices in sunset colors. Pieces purple and blue as mussel shells. Pieces like winter sky, gray and white and all the tones in between. Pieces that ring like a bell when struck.
In the process, this 50-year-old heavy-equipment operator, who lives in a motor home on his property among the sagebrush and the chukars, may have uncovered something scientists say would be very rare: a glimpse of an upright ancient forest of hickory, elm, maple and sweet gum from the Miocene Epoch, a time of mastodons and saber-toothed tigers.
But scientists are still puzzling over some mysteries. Why are there no roots, or evidence of them? Did the trees really grow just where they now stand, or were they transported?
And for sure, he got something else, too: a new life.
A local museum just paid him $150,000 for four short stumps, some polished slices and two tall trunks. And that was a discount price. What makes Friend's find worth more than money is the fact that the ancient trees are still upright, said Thomas Dillhoff, a curatorial associate at the University of Washington's Burke Museum.
Friend says he's not selling any more petrified wood for now anyway. Bamboozled by a few buyers, he wants to regroup and figure out what he's really sitting on.
Link & Image: The Seattle Times
Tags: Petrified Wood | Stone | Forest | Miocene Epoch
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