RARE LARGE Copper Replaced "Nacimiento" Petrified Wood, Sandoval Co. NM

Description: 5" x 5.5" x 5 1/4" 9 pounds There are not many out there like this. A very rare large specimen of chalcocite (copper ore) replaced wood from Nacimiento Mine, Sandoval county, NM, Green Log claim. Beautiful Azurite and Malachite all over this one with a large face of lignite really showing the wood side of this. This is simply an amazing piece of this. There is a paper being peer reviewed at the moment on these particular specimens that is anticipated to be out this fall. Here is an article explaining the unique qualities of this material: The Nacimiento Mountains in Northern New Mexico, USA, is one such location. The geological formation is basically unique, in that most other formations that produce material that might look similar are of a different age, or have mineralogical differences. The Nacimiento material if of Triassic age, roughly 250 million years old, and the knowledge that it took that long to form before we unearth it and expose the seemingly still-fresh interiors is amazing. Often, when we unearth a new piece, what looks like charcoal comes tumbling and crumbling off of the specimens, still wet and shiny like the very biological material that they once were. It takes years of experience and a keen eye to come back from the zone with high-quality specimens, and it takes a lot of work and artistic skill to improve the quality of the specimens beyond their raw form. It takes even more paperwork and claim fees to keep it all going, but at least in this case, both the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management have been very reasonably accommodating. The fact that we just use manual labor and disturb very little ground helps ease things, too. The manual labor involved in just carrying this stuff is brutal. Here’s an example: what you see in the next picture is a 50 pound chunk. That’s almost too heavy to haul on the steep slopes and through the jumbled boulder field between the claim site and the vehicles. The Nacimiento area is reported (USGS, 1905) to have produced up to 60 foot logs almost completely replaced by Copper minerals, especially Chalcocite. What an amazing sight that must have been! Nothing like that is known to have been extracted in the last several lifetimes, as the district has been mostly idle since the 1920’s, with the exception of some production in the 1960’s. That such beauty was melted down into Copper wire to electrify turn of the century homes in Albuquerque stirs a number of emotions, from wonder, to irony, to loss. I guess that “Everything you use originated from a Farm or a Mine…”, and in this case, wood washed downstream in a storm enabled someone to read by electric light 250 million years later – for it is the Carbon in the wood that created the chemical reduction conditions for the Copper-enriched hydrothermal fluids to drop their load in such a specific and concentrated way. The degree to which the wood was enriched by Copper can be seen in this next picture, of a small specimen that has had one end ground down to expose the Chalcocite. This small specimen feels great in your hand, as Copper is pretty dense stuff, and so even small pieces can be very heavy, limiting the maximum size that can be recovered. So much for hauling out a chunk of 60 foot log in my backpack – that would be many, many tons in total. For sure the area has been mined back to the Colonial Spanish time, and probably before by the Natives. The high-grade material is so close to being pure metal, that we are told modern processing actually discarded the super high-grade as it would otherwise gum up the processing plant. There are some good treasure stories in the area (see our Lost DuPont Gold Mine article) and if you get out and about locally, you will see old stone dwellings, petroglyphs, and lithic scatter all over. Then, there’s the story of the local, in modern times, who had been searching for a treasure, and up and left town overnight without notice… https://www.lostadamsgold.com/2019/01/02/250-million-year-old-copper-mineralized-fossil-wood/ Amethyst, quartz, smokey quartz fluorite calcite zeolite barite stilbite apophylite apatite septarian sphalerite dolomite tourmaline opal diamond hematite garnet wulfenite azurite bisbee malachite gem silica chrysocolla copper turquoise cerillos spider web royston landers celestite silver amber shattuckite copper queen lapis sodalite pegmatite harding mine lepidolite jade amazonite crazy lace agate montana hampton butte blue forest ron coleman sweet surrender the crystal collector metaphysical healing petrified wood beryl mineral specimen santa fe taos

Price: 425 USD

Location: Havelock, North Carolina

End Time: 2025-01-27T21:03:49.000Z

Shipping Cost: 25 USD