Why Hunting For 20-Million-Year-Old Petrified Wood Is So Dangerous In Indonesia | Risky Business

This man is risking his life to search for fossils of trees that are 20

million

year

s old, long before the first humans appeared. Pieces of

petrified

wood

could reveal mysteries of our past, but every

year

thousands of fossils are turned into furniture plates and even ashtrays. The items can be sold abroad for up to four times what Indonesian miners earn in an entire year. So what kind of secrets can we learn from these ancient treasures and why is it so

dangerous

to unearth them? It takes a perfect combination of rare events for

wood

to transform in this way, first a lack of oxygen is needed to stop the decay that can occur when a tree falls into a river or is buried under wet soil, the water swelling the wood. and opens its cavities, then a volcanic eruption is needed so that the silica from the ashes can filter out and fill the spaces.

It will begin to form crystals, copying the exact texture of the tree molecule by molecule. Over time, the entire trunk crystallizes in different types of quartz. solid is one of the hardest materials on Earth miners can feel it underground with an iron rod Ellie Su excavated these Minds himself with the help of his coworkers. He is 68 years old, but he still comes in barefoot and brings only a hammer and a crowbar. This mine is about 10 feet deep, it is not reinforced or secured in any way and there are no vents. Ellie finds some fossils within minutes of digging, scraping the walls to see if there is any wood hidden there in 2016. 12 men died when a mine collapsed nearby.

Ellie has never lost a friend, but she was technically injured before digging here. It requires a permit, but officials will only grant one if miners have the right type of equipment. Ellie says most can't afford it, so they run the risk of working illegally. Today, this is the largest log they found, weighing about three times as much as a piece of wood. of the same size, yes, of course, but egg, yes, they have even unearthed pieces that weigh up to 4 tons, which is approximately the weight of a medium truck. They could get $480 for a log that size, but they split the money and have to pay. the landowner too, in the end each one keeps about 60 dollars for a month of work, which is approximately half of the minimum wage in this part of Indonesia.

Ultimately, the wood is marked and sold for much more than the miners initially get for it, but Ellie says that mining is more stable than other jobs because there is a lot of

petrified

wood here. Wood polishers then transferred these slabs to a workshop. His 37-year-old has been polishing pieces for nearly a decade turning them into plates, stools and tables like most petrified wood gems. It can only be cut with a diamond-tipped blade, as the fossils from this part of Indonesia come from a species of tree called senur. They lived 20

million

years ago, when the Earth was warmer, when the wood hardened into rock, turning white beige or black.

Color may take up to 3 weeks to make larger items like this table. You can finish the smaller ones like plates in two days. She works with Kono, a middleman who places custom orders on behalf of international clients who pay twice as much as local stores. but there is no fixed price, each piece is valued depending on the color and patterns. We're told they sold this table for around $3,800, but for him the job is also about building a reputation for his country on the other side of the world. In Arizona, this National Park has more. petrified wood that anywhere else on Earth here is much older than in Indonesia it is about 200 million years old since dinosaurs still roam the Earth paleontologist William Parker took us on a walk through this forest frozen in time these Trees give us clues to what lived and grew during various times in Earth's history, when, for example, CO2 levels are at a high level and there was no polar ice, by examining the color and thickness of the rings.

From trees, scientists can sometimes find out what the climate was when the tree grew and then they can use that. data to discover how different climate conditions could affect life as we know it even today, the Earth is changing, it is important that we understand what makes in those types of environments, taking even a piece of petrified wood from here illegal , but officials say tourists steal a little anyway, go ahead, I'm free off Highway 180, thanks 155, although sometimes they give it back as much as you know, we'd like to tell people they'll be damned if they harvest wood legally, in They are not actually cursed. uh, except maybe for a guilty conscience CU, what happens is people start sending us back a lot of stuff.

The U.S. government spends about $4 million a year to maintain and preserve the park, but without federal protection, this natural and scientific wonder could disappear. Trees are a major problem. part of our ecosystem and we need to understand everything we can about them and hopefully we can better manage those ecosystems or make changes that give them the best chance of success. In 1941, researchers tried to determine how much the petrified wood here is worth. They estimated that all the pieces visible in this park would be worth about 200 million dollars if adjusted for inflation and that doesn't even take into account all the trees that are still buried, but the park does not give importance to the monetary value of this wood , so If we were to collect every piece of petrified wood on earth and place it in stores, collections, or in people's homes, we would lose the scientific context throughout the United States, people can mine properties they own and sell their pieces for thousands of dollars, these pieces of furniture.

A store in New York City has petrified wood items that cost between $500 and $5000 each. Philip Tuan travels to Indonesia himself to collect these finds, but he does not buy from the people we follow for this story. Peta Woods is very unique, you can't. wait what you are going to get just before fire patf get M and cut it, sometime don't see what's inside. The stumps sell for between $1,400 and $1,800 each. Larger items, such as tables, have more varied prices, from around $1,000 to $5,000 depending on the size and it is a part of the entire planet's heritage, only you know that it is very heavy, solid, it will not break or will do nothing, it will just be beautiful forever, so that's cool too.

In Indonesia, miners like Ellie do not have the privilege of buying these pieces. Ellie didn't make it past elementary school because she had to start working. He used to be a motorcycle taxi driver but it was not enough to support his family so he became a minor like most other men in this area, they only own a petrified wood tray, a small moment every year Ellie's mining company.