Peanut Wood (Tumbled)

When these trees died, rivers carried them into a shallow, salty epicontinental sea that covered much of what is now the Australian continent. They arrived at the sea as a piece of driftwood. This was during the Cretaceous time period, when a species of marine clam that loved to eat wood lived in the Australian sea. The clam larvae were able to smell nearby wood and swim to it. When they arrived at a piece of driftwood, they would attach themselves to it and start eating. They shaved off tiny particles of wood – which they would promptly eat. In a few weeks they could excavate a deep tunnel into the soft, mushy wood. In time these holes filed with siliceous shells, from tiny plankton, and eventually turned the wood into a fossil.