On this day, we stood among the trees of a 160 million year old forest. What an awesome thought.
This is a Jurassic forest that has been preserved for about 160 million years courtesy of a volcanic eruption. The lava seeped into the trees halting them at the stage of growth they had reached at the time. The volcanic mud has preserved the wood all this time, and the action of the pounding of the waves has washed away subsequent deposits of soil to reveal the original tree stumps embedded into the rocks, and also some branches that fell and lay horizontally along the ground.
To touch wood that is 160 million years old is extraordinary! I’m from Dorset in the UK which is famously a Jurassic coastline, but we have nothing like this to my knowledge. Given the pounding the waves of the Tasman Sea were giving all of this even on a clear, sunny and calm day, I am amazed there’s anything left of the petrified forest at all. Respect to you, quiet earth.
la perle 