Petrified Forest National Park is world famous for it's impressive collection of colourful quartz laden petrified wood, but this park is most certainly a lot more than just petrified wood, it is an international learning centre for palaeontologists throughout the world.
The Petrified Forest sits proudly in the arid lands of Arizona's Painted Desert, but the dry rugged badlands that you see today, did not exist here in the Triassic Period 225 million years ago.
What was to be Arizona in the Triassic era sat much closer to the equator, with the climate being tropical and forests of the giant conifer trees that were to be turned to stone in the centuries to come standing proudly surrounded by massive rivers, a very hot and humid environment totally different to today.
The main inhabitants of the area were amphibians and reptiles, none more impressive than the fearsome Phytosaur, a creature with the appearance of a crocodile that could hunt it's prey on land as well as in water, the park has many remnants of the Phytosaur proving these ferocious beasts would grow to nearly 30 feet in length.
Many different varieties of bony fish and the presence of freshwater sharks would just have added to the many dangers of the waterways.
Based on the evidence of fossil discoveries it has been believed for quite some time now, that the dinosaurs started to appear near the end of the Triassic period, between 200 and 225 million years ago.
Dinosaurs can basically be split into two groups, Ornithiscians and Saurischians.
Early Ornithiscians were thought to have developed into beasts like the lumbering armour plated Stegosaurus of the Jurassic period and the duck-billed dinosaurs from the Cretaceous era.
The Saurischians on the other hand were to evolve into Sauropodomorphs the long necked treetop munching giants and Theropods the two-legged, meat eating killing machines like Tyrannosaurus rex.
Back to a more familiar time in the 1930s and again in 1989 at Revuelto Creek, New Mexico some teeth were discovered and a new species of dinosaur was unveiled and named Revueltosaurus callenderi, the trouble was as only teeth had been found, no one had any clue as to what the dinosaur would look like, only that it was from the late Triassic and by the shape of the teeth probably an ancestor of an Ornithiscian plant eater.
It was the Petrified Forest National Park that came to the rescue, in may 2004 and again in june 2005 two fossil skeletons were found in the park complete with teeth, and those discoveries were to make palaeontologist's sit up and scratch their heads, because the teeth looked like those of plant eating Ornithiscians it was naturally assumed they came from a dinosaur, however Revueltosaurus is not a dinosaur at all but an ancestor of the crocodile.
What this discovery does do, is throw doubt on all the other identities of dinosaurs identified by their teeth and brings into question that Ornithiscians and Theropods did not evolve together in the Triassic era as palaeontologist's believed, so as you have found out Petrified Forest National Park is not just about petrified trees and logs, it is an informative gateway to the dawn of the dinosaurs, a knowledge base of the earth's fascinating past and must visit part of Arizona's beautiful Painted Desert.
The Petrified Forest sits proudly in the arid lands of Arizona's Painted Desert, but the dry rugged badlands that you see today, did not exist here in the Triassic Period 225 million years ago.
What was to be Arizona in the Triassic era sat much closer to the equator, with the climate being tropical and forests of the giant conifer trees that were to be turned to stone in the centuries to come standing proudly surrounded by massive rivers, a very hot and humid environment totally different to today.
The main inhabitants of the area were amphibians and reptiles, none more impressive than the fearsome Phytosaur, a creature with the appearance of a crocodile that could hunt it's prey on land as well as in water, the park has many remnants of the Phytosaur proving these ferocious beasts would grow to nearly 30 feet in length.
Many different varieties of bony fish and the presence of freshwater sharks would just have added to the many dangers of the waterways.
Based on the evidence of fossil discoveries it has been believed for quite some time now, that the dinosaurs started to appear near the end of the Triassic period, between 200 and 225 million years ago.
Dinosaurs can basically be split into two groups, Ornithiscians and Saurischians.
Early Ornithiscians were thought to have developed into beasts like the lumbering armour plated Stegosaurus of the Jurassic period and the duck-billed dinosaurs from the Cretaceous era.
The Saurischians on the other hand were to evolve into Sauropodomorphs the long necked treetop munching giants and Theropods the two-legged, meat eating killing machines like Tyrannosaurus rex.
Back to a more familiar time in the 1930s and again in 1989 at Revuelto Creek, New Mexico some teeth were discovered and a new species of dinosaur was unveiled and named Revueltosaurus callenderi, the trouble was as only teeth had been found, no one had any clue as to what the dinosaur would look like, only that it was from the late Triassic and by the shape of the teeth probably an ancestor of an Ornithiscian plant eater.
It was the Petrified Forest National Park that came to the rescue, in may 2004 and again in june 2005 two fossil skeletons were found in the park complete with teeth, and those discoveries were to make palaeontologist's sit up and scratch their heads, because the teeth looked like those of plant eating Ornithiscians it was naturally assumed they came from a dinosaur, however Revueltosaurus is not a dinosaur at all but an ancestor of the crocodile.
What this discovery does do, is throw doubt on all the other identities of dinosaurs identified by their teeth and brings into question that Ornithiscians and Theropods did not evolve together in the Triassic era as palaeontologist's believed, so as you have found out Petrified Forest National Park is not just about petrified trees and logs, it is an informative gateway to the dawn of the dinosaurs, a knowledge base of the earth's fascinating past and must visit part of Arizona's beautiful Painted Desert.
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