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Tall petrified tree trunks credit: US National Park Service / William W Dunmire, 1966 (Usage does not imply endorsement of site contents) |
To learn the rest of the hard facts, click on "The Yellowstone petrified forests — Evidence of catastrophe".Yellowstone National Park, the oldest national park in the United States, spans parts of three states: Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. It is famous for its geothermal activity, including 10,000 hot springs and 200 geysers, including ‘Old Faithful.’ There are also mountains, including one of black obsidian (volcanic glass), cooled and hardened basalt lava flows, deep valleys and canyons, rivers, lakes, forests, petrified wood (wood turned into rock), and wildlife.Petrified forests?In some places in Yellowstone Park, erosion of a hillside reveals layers of upright petrified trees. At Specimen Ridge, there are said to be 27 layers, while Specimen Creek contains about 50. This means that the Specimen Creek formation is especially huge—its total vertical height is 1,000 meters (3,400 feet). This raises the question: how did the petrified tree layers form?