Baking in the Arizona sunshine is a forest frozen in stone. Spanning 896 square kilometres, the Petrified Forest National Park is a vast, arid site filled with undulating hills and rocky outcrops all staying dry in the hot weather. But it wasn’t always this way.
The Petrified Forest was designated a national park in 1962
© Getty
Travelling back more than 225 million years, the almost-barren land today once flourished with towering conifers and trickling rivers. However, during Earth’s evolutionary journey to the modern day, the land was stripped of its once-luscious green foliage. Instead it has been left with the petrified shadow of a forest that once was. As if having stared into the eyes of Medusa, solid stone tree trunks litter the ground. They are the same trees that once stood tall in a living forest, but over time have undergone a type of preservation known as petrification.