Dinosaur Bone and Onyx Inlay Ring

Dinosaur Bone and Onyx Inlay Ring is featured in 14K White Gold and 14K Rose Gold ring and is inlayed with dinosaur bone and onyx!

Agatized dinosaur bone fossils are found throughout the world. In order to agatize they had to be petrified sometime between 65,000,000 to 230,000,000 years ago. Once an animal dies, the organic bone must be covered by volcanic ash, volcanic lava flow, volcanic mud-flows, sediments in lakes and swamps, mud/silt/clays washed in by floods, or landslides. After burial in an environment where oxygen has been excluded, preventing decay, petrification occurs by replacing the original organic material. Fossils are formed once the ground water first dissolves out the tissue and leaves minerals in its place.

Agatized Dinosaur Bone is a rare form of fossilized dinosaur bone where the original fossilized bone has been replaced with silica-based compounds such as agate, jasper, chalcedony, or opal. Utah and Colorado provide the perfect environment to begin the replacement of the calcite in the original fossils with silicates. The most prominent layers of gem bone come from the Morrison Formation. The agatized bone was created over 100,000,000 years after the dinosaur died and was buried.

The building block of agatized bone (silica oxide) is the same material that is used in the creation of quartz and glass. As is true with most fossils, the original structural detail of the bone is preserved allowing us to see the cell structure.  The varied and unique colors of dinosaur bone are caused by the other minerals that enter the bone in combination with the silica. The intensity of the color depends on the quantity each mineral that is present.