Where is the best national park to see petrified trees?
I've heard of Arizona's Petrified Forest National Park. Is this the best place to see colorful real petrified trees? What should I know about petrified wood before I visit a park? Can I touch it, or is it fragile?
Answers ( 1 )
ummmm.... you aren't going to see a "petrified forest" or even a whole "petrified tree"; that isn't how petrification works.
It's a fossilization process, and, just like any other fossils, it is rare to find a large "thing" which is full, complete and fossilized.
With animals, while we have found a few somewhat mummified soft bits, usually all we get is bones, teeth and claws. Sometimes, especially when mummified- accidently or on purpose- there can be preservation of softer tissues- plant fibers, animal fibers, hair- but it takes extraordinary circumstances for that to happen**. With wood- which is quite-easily decomposed, it is very difficult to find huge parts of trees- large pieces of large trees, yes, but whole trees, unlikely.
As for the Petrified Forest in northern Arizona, my yes! That's the place to go. I do not recommend coming here in high summer- around late September all the way through early November is your best weather bet- warm in the day, cool evenings, and, if we had a good summer monsoon, lots of plant life is still green. It is quite an amazing National Park- but you cannot take specimans from the park itself.
There are, however, other places in Arizona where you can:
https://raregoldnuggets.com/?p=5920
Plan to spend a few days for mineral collecting of all sorts- but also make sure you know where you can and cannot collect- Arizonans can get a mite tetchy about trespassers.
**In fact, we have only ever recovered one ancient human stomach- which is where we got the idea for the Paleo Diet- eat like a cave man-- got to be healthy! Except, well, in addition to some bug bits, the stomach contained leaves, tree bark, tree wood, and small rocks.
The proponents of the Paleo Diet somehow just forget to mention the last three when extolling the virtue of their epiphany diet.