User:Auric/Petrified French tools

Sometime between 1786 and 1788, workers quarrying soft limestone near Aix-en-Provence to rebuild the Palace of Justice, discovered a quantity of what appeared to be petrified wooden tools, not dissimilar to their own equipment, including a broken type of agate that appeared to have been a quarryman's board. The reassembled board was 7-8 ft long and an inch thick. Also found were stumps of pillars and half-worked rock, as well as coins. The tools and associated artefacts were found in a bed of sand 50 ft deep and 11 layers below the original ground level.

Also mentioned in the Count de Bournon's Mineralogy.

Modern interpretation
It is possible these were the remains of a petrified forest, although this does not explain the coins.