To petrified forest.
Today, petrified forest national park is a semi-arid grassland. Temperatures can range from above 38C to well below freezing. About 25cm of moisture comes…
During the late triassic period, rivers then flowing through the park carried much sediment. As the waters subsided after flooding events, silt, mud and sand…
The badlands are part of the Chinle formation, which was deposited 200 million years ago, over a 10 million years period, during the late triassic period. The…
Dry wash.
Fossilized logs. The wood was actually driftwood. During flooding and high precipitation events, tree roots were dislodged from banks upstream the rivers;…
Buried beneath layers of mud, silt, sand and volcanic ash, the logs were protected from decay. Mineral-laden ground water percolating down through the layers…
If the petrification process continued, the remaining organic material degraded and was replaced by more silica crystals. Eventually, this results in the…
Petrified wood.
Placerias hesternus, a reptile with many mammalian features, around 2.5m long, up to 2 tons. A large number of placerias fossils were found in a single quarry…
Polished petrified wood: 400kg, 10 hours cutting time (a comparable granite piece would have taken 2.5 hours to cut).
Since petrified logs are composed of quartz, they are hard and brittle, breaking easly when subjected to stress. The hard logs are surrounded by softer…
