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Petrified Wood Forests
Petrified Forest of Arizona
The Petrified Forest of Arizona is composed of over a hundred silicified stumps, tree trunks and logs laying randomly as if someone came in millions of years ago and cut them down, leaving them to turn into stone. These petrified trees are about 175 million years old and from the Triassic age. The petrified wood can be found in a part of the Painted Desert- a place with many brilliant colors coming from the Chinle formation. The petrified wood in this area is surprisingly colorful due to the fact that it is agatized. There are reds, browns, purples and yellows in the wood that used to be mainly conifers and were related to araucarian pines of South America and Australia.
Petrified Forest in Yellowstone National Park
The Petrified Forest in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming is more extensive than that found in Arizona. Many of the petrified trees are actually still in the upright position. In this locality there are actually 27 buried forests, each one located above the other with a thickness of about 2000 ft. In addition to fossilized trees there are imprints from leaves, needles, cones and twigs in the volcanic ash layers. The petrified forests found in Yellowstone National Park are about 50 million years old and formed during the Eocene Epoch.
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