My husband and I also love fossil and relic hunting together... when we aren't chasing 5 kids! 🤣💚 Why a scallop shell, you ask? Well, that's how it all started! When Bryan and I met, we discovered that we had SO MUCH in common. A love for coffee, antique shopping, video games, rocks, and FOSSILS! So, he took me to a beach off of the York River, and we went fossil hunting! There were these fossili
zed Chesapecten everywhere! Then, we hit a motherload... a ton of huge shells, all hidden in boulders on the shoreline. We were so excited. Since then, we have been having fun and doing life together. I have three kids from a previous marriage, and Bryan and I have a little baby boy together. It's a busy home, but I have my best friend to find fossils and do life with! ❤️
We carry a variety of petrified wood, agates, geodes, other stones/ minerals, fossils, plant cuttings, mason jars, and other items. If you have any questions about any specific items, please reach out! Here is so info about petrified wood and our common fossil, the Chesapecten Jeffersonius...
Petrified wood is a fossil. It forms when plant material is buried by sediment and protected from decay due to oxygen and organisms. Then, groundwater rich in dissolved solids flows through the sediment, replacing the original plant material with silica, calcite, pyrite, or another inorganic material such as opal. The color of the wood is determined by which minerals the wood gets introduced to. The type of sediment that replaces the organic material determines the color of the petrified wood. Black coloration, the rarest, is due to the presence of pyrite or organic carbon. White is due to the presence of silicon dioxide. Blue and purple coloration is due to maganese dioxide. Tan is the most common color and is due to silica dioxide. Green coloration is due to iron in the soil. And so on and so forth... there are so many variations. Some of our wood is agatized and is filled with druzy crystals. A druzy is sets of tiny crystals of minerals that form on the surface of another stone. There are many types of druzy, because there are many types of minerals. Each type of druzy has particular characteristics, such as crystal size, luster and color. They have a sugar-like appearance. They are often found in the hollow cavity of Agate geodes. We carry a variety of different fossils, but our most common/ popular one is the Chesapecten Jeffersonius, an extinct scallop, and is actually the state fossil of Virginia, as of 1993. It's the first North American fossil to be illustrated in scientific literature in 1687. They're from the early Pliocene epoch, about 4 - 5 million years ago. There is a lot of growth, new things, and variety coming to the page - stay tuned!
