Today we pay a visit to Petrified Forest National Park in northeastern Arizona. I've seen a lot of petrified wood, but this park certainly had some of the most impressive specimens and the biggest petrified forests I've seen so far. I hope you'll join me in this short video. I kept it short because not everyone can stare at rock and be fascinated by it for as long as I can (Roxy for Rocks)...LOL (wink). In Greek mythology, merely glancing at the ugly head of Medusa could turn the looker into stone. For wood, the process is not so fast. Petrified wood forms when fallen trees get washed down a river and buried under layers of mud, ash from volcanoes and other materials. Sealed beneath this muck deprives the rotting wood from oxygen — the necessary ingredient for decay. As the wood's organic tissues slowly break down, the resulting voids in the tree are filled with minerals such as silica — the stuff of rocks. Over millions of years, these minerals crystallize within the wood's cellular structure forming the stone-like material known as petrified wood. The wood, no longer wood at this point, takes on the hues of the minerals that fill its pores. Minerals such as copper, cobalt, and chromium give off a green-blue color, while manganese presents a pink hue. To learn more about the geologic layers at Petrified National Park, click the link below: https://www.nps.gov/pefo/learn/nature... And if you're wondering how the trees got cut into pieces: https://www.arizonahighways.com/blog/...
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