Travel-World Photography
Petrified Forest National Park is located East of Flagstaff, not far from the border to New Mexico. The park covers about 900 km2, consisting of semi-desert shrub steppe as well as highly eroded and colorful badlands. Averaging about 1,600 m in elevation, the park has a dry windy climate with temperatures that vary from summer highs of about 38 °C to winter lows well below freezing.
The Petrified Forest is known for its fossils, especially fallen trees that lived in the Late Triassic, about 225 million years ago. The sediments containing the fossil logs are part of the widespread and colorful formation, from which also the Painted Desert gets its name.
Beginning about 60 million years ago, the plateau was pushed upward by tectonic forces and exposed to increased erosion. All of the rock layers above the formation have been removed by wind and water, and thus exposing the petrified logs.
