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Puyango Petrified Forest is a fossil deposit of
The main attraction of the Puyango Petrified Forest are the petrified trees of the Araucarioxylon genus. The fossils are about 100 million years old and are perhaps the largest collection of petrified wood in the world; The largest specimen is 2 m in diameter and 15 m in length. There are also fossils of leaves corresponding to four genera of primitive plants resembling the present ferns and palms. According to Robert E. Shoemaker, a noted
Puyango Petrified Forest is a fossil deposit of petrified wood
Petrified wood (from Ancient Greek meaning 'rock' or 'stone'; literally 'wood turned into stone'), is the name given to a special type of ''fossilized wood'', the fossilized remains of terrestrial plant, terrestrial vegetation. ''Petrifaction ...
located in the middle basin of the Puyango River
The Tumbes River ( or Río Túmbez in Peru; Río Puyango in Ecuador), is a river in South America. The river's sources are located between Ecuadorian El Oro and Loja provinces. It is the border between El Oro and Loja, and afterwards the border ...
, between the Ecuadorian provinces of El Oro and Loja. The area covers 2,658 hectares and its sediments are divided into four geological formations
A geological formation, or simply formation, is a body of rock having a consistent set of physical characteristics (lithology) that distinguishes it from adjacent bodies of rock, and which occupies a particular position in the layers of rock expo ...
, dating from the late Cretaceous
The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 143.1 to 66 mya (unit), million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era (geology), Era, as well as the longest. At around 77.1 million years, it is the ...
period. These deposits are rich in both fossilized trunks and leaves - which belonged to the typical Mesozoic flora - as well as fossils of invertebrates such as bivalves
Bivalvia () or bivalves, in previous centuries referred to as the Lamellibranchiata and Pelecypoda, is a class of aquatic molluscs (marine and freshwater) that have laterally compressed soft bodies enclosed by a calcified exoskeleton consis ...
, ammonites
Ammonoids are extinct, (typically) coiled-shelled cephalopods comprising the subclass Ammonoidea. They are more closely related to living octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish (which comprise the clade Coleoidea) than they are to nautiluses (family N ...
, echinoderms
An echinoderm () is any animal of the phylum Echinodermata (), which includes starfish, brittle stars, sea urchins, sand dollars and sea cucumbers, as well as the sessile sea lilies or "stone lilies". While bilaterally symmetrical as larv ...
, among others.
Characteristics
The forest is located between 360 and 500 meters above sea level and has an average temperature of 22.5 °C. The most appropriate season to visit is the dry season from May to December. During the winter season the area receives more than 900 mm of rain that change the landscape considerably, making the visit interesting also in these months. Puyango is one of the few remnants of dry tropical forest in the southwest of Ecuador where strong slopes and ravines have preserved the natural and complete natural vegetation of this type of ecosystem and other areas of secondary forest that are in recovery. Puyango was formerly a sea; the oldest fossils correspond to marine organisms. This sea dried up, populated with forests and animals, organisms that after hundreds of years, due to great natural events were buried underground. Finally, by geological movements typical of the Earth's crust, these remains came to the surface again forming an invaluable sample of the remote past of the planet. The most recent fossils found are 60 million years old and the oldest fossils reach 500 million years.Attractions
The main attraction of the Puyango Petrified Forest are the petrified trees of the Araucarioxylon genus. The fossils are about 100 million years old and are perhaps the largest collection of petrified wood in the world; The largest specimen is 2 m in diameter and 15 m in length. There are also fossils of leaves corresponding to four genera of primitive plants resembling the present ferns and palms. According to Robert E. Shoemaker, a noted paleobotanist
Paleobotany or palaeobotany, also known as paleophytology, is the branch of botany dealing with the recovery and identification of plant fossils from geological contexts, and their use for the biological reconstruction of past environments (pale ...
who studied the area between 1975 and 1976, the amount of petrified trunks contained in such a compact area represent one of the largest collections of this type in the world, comparable perhaps to Arizona's Petrified Forest National Park
Petrified Forest National Park is a national park of the United States in Navajo and Apache counties in northeastern Arizona. Named for its large deposits of petrified wood, the park covers about , encompassing semi-desert shrub steppe as wel ...
in the U.S.
In 1987, the area was also declared a protected forests to preserve natural resources, including some of the last remnants of dry forest in the region. Nowadays Puyango is managed by the prefectures of Loja and El Oro and the municipalities of Puyango and Las Lajas. In 2005, the Puyango Protected Forest was declared as an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International. There are 161 species of birds recorded at the Puyango Protected Forest, including 43 species endemic to the dry forest of western Ecuador and northwestern Peru.See also
* List of World Heritage Sites in EcuadorReferences
{{Petrified forests El Oro Province Loja Province Paleontological sites of South America Protected areas of Ecuador Geology of Ecuador