<p>Pinus sp. - quartz-permineralized pine tree trunk in the Pliocene of California, USA.
</p><p>The Calistoga Petrified Forest has been called the best-anywhere petrified forest of Pliocene age.  The fossil wood here is preserved with the most common permineralization mineral - quartz.  The preservation of these trees was the result of burial by a rhyolitic volcanic ash-flow tuff of the Sonoma Volcanics (Upper Pliocene).  The volcanic tuff was erupted from a vent near modern-day Mt. St. Helena (= north of this locality).
</p><p>This is the only fossil pine tree found so far in the Calistoga Fossil Forest.  All other fossil tree trunks at the site are redwoods.  This pine tree trunk is 43 feet long and 2 feet in diameter.
</p><p>Classification: Plantae, Pinophyta, Pinopsida Pinales, Pinaceae
</p><p>Stratigraphy: Sonoma Volcanics, Upper Pliocene, 3.2 to 3.4 Ma
</p><p>Locality: The Pit Tree, Calistoga Petrified Forest, northern side of Petrified Forest Road, west-southwest of the town Calistoga, eastern Sonoma County, Coast Ranges of northwest-central California, USA
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<hr><p>See info. at:
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&lt;a href="<a class="external free" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrified_Forest_(California)">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrified_Forest_(California)</a>" rel="noreferrer nofollow"&gt;en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrified_Forest_(California)&lt;/a&gt;
<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.flickr.com/people/47445767@N05">James St. John</a>
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<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/jsjgeology/49098007671/">Pinus sp. (fossil pine tree trunk) (Sonoma Volcanics, Upper Pliocene, 3.2 to 3.4 Ma; Calistoga Petrified Forest, Calistoga, California, USA) 1</a>