Wood

The Petrified Forest was incredible. I walked on this little asphalt path as lizards and insects ran around in the arroyos at my feet. John Michael was especially impressed with the minerals that made up the chunks of ancient logs. Red iron oxide, yellow manganese, white quartz-y stuff. It was all there.

These logs were deposited when a overflowing river in the Triassic period ripped ancient trees from their bases and carried them downstream. They passed weird animals on their way. Possibly early dinosaurs, but most likely things called therapsids. Therapsids were bizarre mammal like reptiles that flourished in the Permian and Triassic eras, but are now only fossils. The trees floating on the river became fossils too. If they sunk and got buried, minerals would very slooooooowly replace the celluose in the wood. Eventually they became only stone in the shape of a tree.

The surrounding area was beautiful too. With the whites and reds of the Painted Desert stretching off as far as the eye could see. With even more weird Triassic fossils hidden by the rock.