The place:
The Petrified Forest is a 93533 acre national park located in north east Arizona, south west United States of America. The fossil bearing rocks consist of the world's largest and most colourful concentrations of petrified wood with numerous bones of reptiles and amphibians. These rocks are part of the Chinle Formation and date to the Late Triassic period.

The finds:
These include Coelophysis, several finds of Postosuchus, forty Placerias found in one place, metoposaurs and 2 large teeth of a cynodont. A variety of fossil plants have also been identified such as horsetails, cycads, ferns and araucaria.

The environment:
In the Late Triassic period seasonal rivers deposited silt and mud around the low laying forested landscape. The bodies of animals were buried in these sediments and in lakes and pools around the forest area. This formed the deposits that are seen today with siltstones and mudstones mixed with petrified logs and trees.

The people:
The Petrified Forest Monument was made in 1906 to protect the fossil wood of the area. This was before the animal fossils were discovered in the 1920's by Charles Camp, a palaeontologist from the University of California. He was the first of many to study the location.