8.5" Petrified Teredo (Shipworm Bored) Wood - North Dakota

This is a 8.5" wide, polished section of petrified teredo wood from the Cannonball Formation in North Dakota. It comes with a display stand.

Teredo wood the name that is given to wood that has been bored into by small, worm-shaped marine mollusks, commonly known as shipworms. During the Paleocene period (approximately 60 million years ago) parts of North Dakota were covered by warm water swamps, similar to Florida today. Sequoias and other trees growing in these swamps fell into the water and were washed out to sea become driftwood. This driftwood was then bored into by the marine shipworms. Under the right conditions this driftwood would become fossilized and replaced with silica through the process of permineralization.

Teredo wood is the state fossil of North Dakota.