USA - Arizona, Petrified Forest National Park

Petrified Forest National Park is well known for its abundant number of fossils, especially fallen trees that lived in the Late Triassic Period, about 225 million years ago. The park is home to some of the most impressive fossils ever found and more are being discovered each year as erosion exposes new evidence. Fossils found here show the forest was once a tropical region, filled with towering trees; more than 150 different species of fossilized plants have been discovered.

When trees were toppled by volcanic eruptions, they were swept away by flowing water and deposited in marshes and covered with mud and volcanic ash. Buried under layers of sediment, the logs remained buried for millions and millions of years undergoing an extremely slow process of petrification, which essentially turned the logs to colourful stone. Much of the park’s petrified wood is from Araucarioxylon arizonicum trees (an extinct species of conifer).

The beautiful colours in the petrified wood come mainly from three minerals: pure quartz is white; manganese oxides form blue, purple, black and brown; and iron oxides provide hues from yellow through red to brown.

Theodore Roosevelt created Petrified Forest National Monument on December 8, 1906. Petrified Forest was designated as a national park on December 9, 1962.

(Main picture was taken along the Giant Logs Trail, behind the rainbow Forest Museum. The colourful collared lizard is quite common in the park during summer months.)