Peru's petrified forest: The struggle to study and preserve one of the world's most remarkable fossi
Peru's petrified forest: The struggle to study and preserve one of the world's most remarkable fossil sites
By Terri Cook
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Located approximately 2,800 meters high on a plateau in the Andes, Peru’s petrified forest is exposed around the rim
of a caldera-like basin. To the east and south of the basin, the Rio Chancay has sliced a deep canyon.
Credit: Jean Schnell.[/font]
Tucked high in the Andes Mountains of northern Peru is a remarkable fossil locality: a 39-million-year-old petrified forest preserved in nearly pristine condition. With its existence unknown to scientists until the early 1990s — and its significance unbeknownst to villagers — this ancient forest hosts the remains of more than 40 types of trees, some still rooted, that flourished in a lowland tropical forest until they were suddenly buried by a volcanic eruption and a series of roiling torrents of mud and debris known as lahars.
These fossils provide an unusually detailed record of neotropical vegetation and climate during the Eocene, a period in Earth’s history when the highest temperatures were about 10 degrees Celsius warmer than today. Such preservation is rare in the New World tropics, as is the close association, anywhere in the rock record, of petrified wood with fossilized leaves.
Since its discovery, scientists and other concerned citizens from Peru to Colorado have been working to study and preserve the spectacular site, now known as El Bosque Petrificado Piedra Chamana, and its unusual and diverse fossils.
Discovering the Flower of the Swamp
Located at approximately 2,800 meters elevation on the Pacific slope of the rugged Andes Mountains, Peru’s petrified forest is exposed around the rim of a basin in which the remote village of Sexi (pronounced like “sexy”; population 450) is nestled amid the grandeur of the Cordillera Occidental of the Andes. The village’s name stems from the native Quechua word “Secci,” meaning “flower of the swamp” — possibly a figurative tribute to the village’s beautiful setting or a reference to a certain plant found in wet areas. To the east and south of the basin, the Rio Chancay has sliced a gorge as deep as the Grand Canyon not far from peaks towering more than 4,000 meters tall.
More:
http://www.earthmagazine.org/article/perus-petrified-forest-struggle-study-and-preserve-one-worlds-most-remarkable-fossil-sites#overlay-context=
