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About This GigapanToggle
- Taken by
- thomas poscharsky
- Explore score
- 0.05 Gigapixels
- Date added
- Jun 07, 2010
- Date taken
- Jun 07, 2010
AT JASPER POINT Petrified Forest National Park is a U.S. National Park along Interstate 40 between Holbrook and Navajo, Arizona in the United States. It features one of the world's largest and most colorful concentrations of petrified wood, mostly of the species Araucarioxylon arizonicum.
The park consists of two large areas connected by a north–south corridor. The northern area encompasses part of the multicolored badlands of the Upper Triassic Chinle Formation called the Painted Desert. The southern area includes colorful terrain and several concentrations of petrified wood. Several American Indian petroglyph sites are also found in the southern area. Near the south end of the park is Agate House, a Native American building of petrified wood, reconstructed during the 1930s.
Petrified wood is not unique; it can be found all over the nation and the world. However, Petrified Forest National Park contains some of the largest and best-preserved petrified wood sites in the world. More importantly, the combination of the Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert provides us with an extraordinarily diverse fossil record that cannot be found elsewhere. Fossils can be found going back over 200 million years, representing the Late Triassic period. Most of the petrified trees are around 225 million years old. Aside from fossils, the park is also known for having thousands of prehistoric petroglyphs and pictographs, which are rock carvings and cave paintings left by ancient peoples. Anthropological research has shown many of the carvings to be solar calendars.