I saw something that said all the petrified wood on earth was created in a time before the evolution of the fungi that rot wood. I don’t know if this is actually true but if it is, does that mean there will be no new petrified wood ever?
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What you’re thinking of is coal. Coal beds all across the world were laid down some 400 million years ago when trees were a new thing, so they just weren’t decomposed. So yes, that won’t happen again. It’s still possible for the process to occur in theory, but not on the same scale, because now you need very specific circumstances to avoid the bacteria and fungi.
But coal isn’t petrified wood, it’s just compressed and transformed. It’s still carbon.
Petrified wood is something else. It’s when the organic material is replaced by minerals. It’s a fossil, like dinosaur bones. There’s not much carbon left.
Petrification was never a common process, because it always requires very specific circumstances, but that hasn’t changed, so it can still happen just the same. So there will be new petrified wood.
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