We’ve found a new source for quality petrified wood specimens and have been off on a series of adventures trying to secure some of these new petrified logs! It took several trips to Myanmar to pull it off, but we finally managed to import some amazing new petrified wood logs to work with in the shop! This hefty log is among the first I’ve cut as I gain familiarity with this new-to-me petrified forest! It was the first log I cut that was in predominantly white agate. It looks very much like some of the well preserved hardwoods found here in the Pacific Northwest (hickory was the first thing that came to mind) but it comes from halfway around the world in central Burma! I’ve included a microphoto to share what I’m seeing. In my reference books, the closest match to modern woods is Mansonia. I don’t pretend to be a paleobotanist and my educated guess is only that. Many of the tropical hardwoods look something like this so it’s difficult for me to say what species it is with my amateur identification skills. My expertise is in polishing however, and I have polished this nicely preserved fossil wood into a beautiful, perfectly prepared specimen with our signature lapidary work. It is entirely possible that this is all of the stone we’ll ever be able to obtain from this location, so don’t miss a chance at something truly unique and beautiful for your collection! I’d known that Burma was rumored to have some particularly fine petrified wood, but Myanmar was under economic sanctions that prohibited trade with the US until late last year. Those sanctions were lifted once free elections were held and I was finally able to begin exploring another region for petrified logs. But change comes slowly and Myanmar is not a particularly advanced country so the process has been slow and involved to say the least! Last year I managed to obtain two small logs on my first trip to this fascinating country and both produced amazing specimens. I quite literally travel to the ends of the earth in search of finds like this to work with and share with other collectors, and this one was a particular adventure! A small taste of that story follows… Last year on a trip to Asia I made a chance discovery that has started a nearly year long odyssey to track down a new source for petrified wood. I met a fellow with a family connection in Myanmar. I had heard rumors for years about petrified logs in Burma, but the only ones I had ever seen were in a market in Shanghai. Those logs were prohibitively expensive, but absolutely fascinating and, best of all, highly agatized. One of the most difficult things to assess with a potential new source for logs is whether the material is agatized enough to produce good specimens. But I was a bit more optimistic in this case as I had high hopes that the nicely silicified logs I’d seen in China were in fact Burmese logs. Since then I’ve made two trips to Myanmar to examine the material and meet the people digging it. Most of what they dig is still exported to China as viewing stones, some of them towering much higher than me! I visited the villages where these stones were being dug and worked by the local craftsmen. Aside from being thatched huts with open sides, these compounds look a lot like my place with rock piled up everywhere! But among the overgrown piles of stone filled with giant blue scorpions no less! Were some choice full logs of what appeared to be very well preserved petrified wood. I eventually managed to secure two smaller logs that I could fly back with in my luggage to cut and polish and prove out the stone I was seeing. As exciting as it always is for me to work with a new source of petrified wood, I was very pleasantly surprised to find fine structure and very polishable specimens in these two logs, though each was preserved very differently and clearly from different sites. While these adventures provide a certain degree of color in my own life, I ultimately do it for my own passion for these amazing stones and the ancient stories they tell. I have not been able to date any of these logs yet (but I will continue to work on it and share that info when I have it). It is my sincere hope that a rare and uncommon specimen for your own collection as the fruits of these early endeavors to find a new source will be something you can enjoy as well. Trust me, it sounds like a lot more fun than it is as it has taken my body a couple of solid weeks to recover from each trip to a country that has only recently begun to open itself up through a series of highly published political and economic changes that they are still struggling with. This is an intriguingly shaped round log cross taken from a well preserved petrified log that shows great structure under magnification. It’s cut from the center of a nicely shaped log that reveals the original growth patterns of the tree in beautiful detail. This specimen has been carefully polished to show off all the gemmy detail inside. It’s another one of those beautiful fossil treasures that some happy Sticks-in-Stones customer is going to flip over! This large log measures about 8 3/4″ x 6 3/8″ across the mirror polished face and is about 5 tall. Weight is 13.9 lbs. A nice, unique naturally wonderful stone collectible exclusively from Sticks-in-Stones Lapidary. The item “SiS Ultra-Rare 14 lb. BURMESE Petrified Wood Log from MYANMAR White MANSONIA” is in sale since Friday, February 15, 2019. This item is in the category “Collectibles\Rocks, Fossils & Minerals\Fossils\Vegetation\Petrified Wood”. The seller is “rockshop” and is located in Beaverton, Oregon. This item can be shipped worldwide.