Calcite-Mineralized Fossil Wood from Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada

Abstract

Calcite-mineralized wood occurs in marine sedimentary rocks on Vancouver Island, British Columbia at sites that range in age from Early Cretaceous to Paleocene. These fossil woods commonly have excellent anatomical preservation that resulted from a permineralization process where calcite infiltrated buried wood under relatively gentle geochemical conditions. Wood specimens typically occur in calcareous concretions in feldspathic clastic sediment. Other concretions in the same outcrops that contain abundant mollusk and crustacea fossils are evidence that plant remains were fluvially transported into a marine basin. Fossiliferous concretions commonly show zoning, comprising an inner region of progressive precipitation where calcite cement developed as a concentric halo around the organic nucleus. An outer zone was produced by pervasive cementation, which was produced when calcite was simultaneously precipitated in pore spaces over the entire zone.