Alberta made petrified wood its official stone in 1977, which means the province’s emblem is a fossil, and that is not a technicality. It formed when microcrystalline quartz filled the pores and cells of trees that fell in the Cretaceous and the Paleocene, 60 to 90 million years ago, and it comes out of the badlands, out of gravel pits and off riverbanks all over the province; the grain of the wood is usually still there in the stone. The catch is the law. Because it is a fossil, the Historical Resources Act applies: inside a provincial park you may not take rocks, plants or fossils at all, and outside one, a piece legally surface collected can be kept only as a CUSTODIAN. Ownership stays with the Province of Alberta, and you may not sell it, alter it, or take it out of the province without the government’s permission. The gravel bars of the Red Deer River are the classic place to look, and looking is the part that is unambiguously legal.
Petrified wood
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
