PETRIFIED WOOD AND DINOSAURS

These guys lived 225 million years ago in what is now Petrified Forest

I am so easily wowed.

I’m walking where dinosaurs walked. Not the big guys. The human-sized guys. And I’m touching felled trees  they might have touched. Wow.

I'm on the Crystal Forest trail

We’re in Arizona, driving through Petrified Forest National Park on our way to see the Painted Desert.

 It’s a 30-mile ride through quite an unusual countryside: a semi-desert shrubby plains area that butts up against a subdued relative of the badlands. No trees. Yet it’s littered with large hewn logs.

There are so many, I imagine this is where Paul Bunyan whacked up thousands of trees on his journey to Storyland.

But 225 million years ago, this area was a lush river basin near the equator, home to dinosaurs, not Paul, and the 200-foot tall coniferous trees today’s logs came from.  They look like Paul was here because of gravity. And science. See, petrified wood is heavy. And for millions of years, it is hidden inside the Earth covered by earth. When the wind and the rain expose the logs, gravity versus weight causes them to break apart, like a piece chalk you drop to the ground. In 90-degree angles.

 

Colorful quartz

The mile-long trail I’m hiking winds through the Crystal Forest  which is littered with the logs. The colorful layers of quartz in the petrified wood twinkle in the morning sun.  (Go here for the science.)  

It’s a simple hike I’m taking back through time. And I am totally wowed.

Panorama of The Painted Desert