[silverleaf]

Looks like shale to me.

If they want to verify it is petrified wood they must have brought samples, not just photos.

What was the level of scientific expertise (geology? archeology?) on the team...?

[ClaireSolt]

Even if it is petrified wood, what makes it a boat?

[H. Paul Pressler IV]

If not shale some kind of sedimentary rock formation.

However, when I was in Sunday School when I was six I was told the Earth was 6,000 years old. Thus the earth would now be 6,035 years old. What ever the case that wood up on that mountain sure does petrify much faster than they taught me in college Geology!

[Buggman]

If they want to verify it is petrified wood they must have brought samples, not just photos.

They did:

Even more intriguing, some of the wood-like rocks were tested just this week and actually proved to be petrified wood . . .

[thomaswest]

re 10: Right on. These pictures show tilted shale beds. You can see many similar examples throughout the Appalachian zone, from Vermont to West Virginia. Fossilized wood shows microscopic structures of the original cells from minerals slowly replacing the organic material. Shales derive from mud or silt deposits that were compressed and heated over millions of years. A microscopic examination of shales shows mineral grains, usually rounded by the stream tumbling that deposited them in a lake or delta.

Any geologist can quickly recognize that this rock is not from wood and is not related in any way to an 'ark'.