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Show Thayn Studying VJhat VJoods Grew in Utah Eons Ago Gregory F. Thayn of Provo is conducting microscope mi-croscope research on hundreds of petrified wood specimens to determine de-termine what types of plants grew in Utah eons ago. The wood has been dead for millions of years, but cell wall structures are still intact in-tact and their petrified condition results in a vast array of beautiful colors, the researcher said. Mr. Thayne, who is a doctoral candidate in botany bo-tany at Brigham Young University, is' studying flora specimens from the so-called Cedar Mountain Moun-tain Formation of eastern east-ern Utah, western Colorado, Colo-rado, and northwestern New Mexico. The deposits date back to the lower Cretaceous Age when the area was fairly tropical, he said. According to Dr. William Wil-liam D. Tidwell, BYU associate professor of botany, the Cedar Mountain Moun-tain Formation abounds in petrified wood deposits, depos-its, but very little research re-search has been done to identify wood types. Specimens in . Mr. Thayn's collection include in-clude flowering plants (angiosperms), evergreen ever-green trees (conifers), tropical palm-like plants (cycads) and ferns called tempskya. "Many of these speci- mens have features in common with mode'rn genera," ge-nera," Mr. Thayn said. "There are relatives of pine and cedar, and there is a sycamore look-alike that is probably related to sassafras." In order to study the woods, Mr. Thayn takes petrified wood chunks and cuts thin slices from them on a special saw. The slices are further reduced to a thickness of two or three microns. In this paper-thin condition, con-dition, they are transparent trans-parent and can be handily handi-ly viewed on a microscope. micro-scope. So far, Mr. Thayn has made about 1,000 thin-section slides. He said that except for coloring, looking at petrified pe-trified wood is "just like looking at living specimens." speci-mens." In addition to studying plant types, the researcher resear-cher is able to determine the climatological history his-tory of the lower Cretaceous Creta-ceous Age by examing growth rings in large petrified wood specimens. |