This amazing and extremely colorful cone is very close to being an absolutely perfect example of the fossil species! And at nearly 1/2 pound, it’s one of the largest perfect grade cones we’ve offered! If you’ve wanted a true museum piece for your own collection – here it is! The external detail in the texture of the seed pod pattern is as fascinating and perfect as the gorgeous agate preserved internal seed pod arrangement. The face is polished to a mirror finish to reveal both the gemstone color and the fossil detail of this incredible, ancient treasure! The outside looks just like a freshly dropped version of produced by one of this tree’s descendants would today with minimal weathering and perfect texture. Increasingly rare as they are only traded from old stock now, you won’t likely see a better example available at an affordable price! I’d seen a few of these around in years past, but the prices were always out of reach for this rockhound. Then several years later I found a fellow who had a selection of both whole and incomplete cones for a relatively reasonable price. I wasn’t all that interested at first, until I looked closely and saw how many of them were wind polished – a good sign that the stone is very hard and has a high agate content! I wetted a few and saw a gorgeous blue agate pattern in the face of some of the weathered ones. That was several years ago, and I still enjoy the chance to cut and polish one every now and then when I just want to work on something really special. The first cone I cut revealed a gorgeous, starburst pattern of dark coffee and black colored plant structure with the spaces between the seed pods and the seed pods themselves filled with a gorgeous blue agate that reminds me of the Blue Forest petrified wood we’ve enjoyed for years. You can see all the detail of this prehistoric cone in a shape and pattern that is unmatched by anything I’d ever seen before. These lovely cones come from Argentina. The cones are “Araucaria elongata” or more commonly, giant monkey puzzle tree cones from Cerro Cuadrado, Patagonia, Argentina. They are from the Jurassic age. When cut in cross section they are beautiful, well preserved and exceptional lapidary/fossil specimens. This is a complete cone half cut from the larger end of an uncommonly large sized cone and it is a virtually flawless example of what can come from this region. The weathered diamond pattern on the exterior of the cone reminds me of the way cycads grow. This cone measures about 2 3/4″ across the polished face and is 2.22″ long. Weight is 0.48 lbs. A nice, unique naturally wonderful stone collectible exclusively from Sticks-in-Stones Lapidary. The item “SiS AMAZINGLY BEAUTIFUL 1/2 lb. Blue & Black Petrified Pinecone Fossil Cone” is in sale since Monday, April 1, 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.