page_title: Puyango Petrified Forest
section_title: Attractions
hierarchical_section_title: Puyango Petrified Forest / Attractions
caption_attribution_description: English: A large fossil tree in the Bosque Petrificado de Puyango in southern Ecuador.
context_page_description: Puyango Petrified Forest is a fossil deposit of petrified wood located in the middle basin of the Puyango River, between the Ecuadorian provinces of El Oro and Loja. The area covers 2,658 hectares and its sediments are divided into four geological formations, dating from the late Cretaceous 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, ammonites, echinoderms, among others.
context_section_description: 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 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 in the U.S.
caption: A large fossilized tree in the Puyango Petrified Forest in southern Ecuador.
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