Have you researched Diatomaceous Earth? It is silica. There is Fresh water and salt water DE. The fossilized remains of diatoms.

Yes.
I focused on it here, you will certainly find many links about it on my wall, in the context of the transformation of silicon into carbon and the creation of a new environment. It's part of the "process" that happened here, it's not fake.
That's why there are so many fossils organic species and petrified wood all over the world, even though in our civilization/age, wood rots and then disintegrates.

Funny you should mention silica-based lifeforms as I've been researching it this week. It's a construction material found on coastal areas of UK Scotland and Wales that people use in their houses, and is calcium carbonite surrounding solidified globules of flint which is nearly 100% silica. I believe these deposits were placed during the Great Flood when sea life was thrown from the North Atlantic and deposited in mass layers onto land that then got buried under glaciers and fossilized since. But it is very interesting.

Thanks for your post, it's still a current topic of research for me as well.
I come from Central Europe, from Czechoslovakia, from the Krkonoše mountains, which are located in the northeast of the country. We've been finding petrified trilobites and petrified wood in these mountains since we were kids (no one ever thought about how wood could be petrified when normally wood rots and decays - hahaha). In addition, there is still sea sand in the soil deposits in the mountains, especially in the deep woods, you can tell. Near where I lived are the Prachovské rocks - they show clear signs of water washing - dents (the wind makes horizontal lines), so there must have been a sea or ocean and a silicon-based environment (fossilized wood and organisms) in the central European area.
But no one thinks about it at all and it MUST NOT be taught in schools - that's what a teacher told me in elementary school...