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As the name suggests, Petrified Forest National Park is covered with fossils.
200 million years ago, this area was covered with a tropical forest. In seasonal flooding, trees were washed away from the forest and accumulated in sandy river channels, where they were later buried by layers of gravely sand, rich in volcanic ash from volcanoes further to the west. The silica in the volcanic ash permineralized the buried logs. Over a long periode of time, all the wood was replaced with silica, colored with oxides of iron and manganese. Much later yet, the desert wind blew the sand away, leaving only the heavy silica deposits.
And so, something like this (below, left), turned into something like this (below, right).
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