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Sun 4 Mar, 2007 12:58 am
Could a leather moccasin petrified ?
Thanks
If you mean like fossil petrified trees, well, no, because true petrification, where organic material such as the wood of a fallen tree is gradually replaced by minerals, takes millions of years.
Wood petrifies when it is buried in silt deposited by flooding rivers or seas and silicates, such as are found in volcanic ash, dissolve and impregnate it. These substances replace the hydrogen and oxygen portions in the wood and begin the petrifaction process by silicification. This may produce very solid opal or quartz minerals. The final product is approximately 5 times as heavy as common pine wood.
An object made of animal skin such as a leather moccasin would rot away long before it had a chance to take up minerals and turn into rock.
Sometimes people put objects such as coins, baby shoes, teddy bears, etc, and - I guess - leather moccasins into certain (not all) hot springs and in a short time, a few weeks, they look like stone because they get covered - on the outside - with minerals from the water. This is not true petrification.
Believe it or not, some Creationists exploit people's confusion and ignorance about true and false petrification to suggest that the earth not really millions of years old!