The Painted Desert, located within Petrified Forest National Park in northeastern Arizona, is a striking landscape of colorful, layered mesas and hills. Spanning about 346 square miles, the park features semi-desert shrub steppe alongside vividly eroded badlands. It is especially renowned for its fossils—most notably petrified wood from fallen trees that lived during the Late Triassic Epoch, around 225 million years ago.
Puerco Pueblo
The earliest known human inhabitants of Petrified Forest National Park arrived around 13,000 years ago during the Clovis culture period. These early peoples are considered the ancestors of many modern Native Americans. By about 2,500 years ago, Ancestral Puebloans began farming corn and living in subterranean pit houses in the region. Around 1,000 years ago, their communities evolved to include above-ground masonry homes known as pueblos, marking a significant development in architecture and social organization.
Blue Mesa
This colorful landscape was formed between about 225 and 223 million years ago, during the Late Triassic Period. Back then, this area was a low-lying floodplain crossed by rivers flowing from distant highlands.
A nice 1 mile hike through Blue Mesa is a great way to
experience those colorful badlands up close.
Crystal Forest
One of the largest concentrations of petrified logs in the park
Rainbow Forest
The Rainbow Forest museum features a nice collection of fossils along with clear, instructive displays that help bring the park’s ancient past to life.
Phytosaurs Are the most commonly found vertebrate fossil
in the Petrified Forest.
A Metoposaur's, an amphibian, body part
Royal fern leafTherapsids were large reptiles that possessed many
mammalian characteristics. They were herbivores.
Rauiisuchids ranked as the top terrestrial predator
of the late Triassic.
Behind the museum is an impressive collection of some of the
largest petrified logs in the park.
