Puyango Petrified Forest facts for kids
The Puyango Petrified Forest is an amazing place in Ecuador where you can see ancient petrified wood. It's located near the Puyango River, between the provinces of El Oro and Loja. This special area covers about 2,658 hectares (that's like 6,500 football fields!). It's famous for its many fossils, including huge fossilized tree trunks and leaves from plants that lived millions of years ago. You can also find fossils of sea creatures like bivalves (like clams) and ammonites (ancient squid-like animals).
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What Makes Puyango Special?
This forest sits between 360 and 500 meters above sea level. It has a warm average temperature of about 22.5 °C (around 72.5 °F). The best time to visit is during the dry season, from May to December. Even in the rainy season (winter), when it gets over 900 mm of rain, the landscape changes and is still very interesting to see!
Puyango is one of the last remaining dry tropical forests in southwest Ecuador. Because of its steep slopes and deep ravines, the natural plants and trees have been protected. This means you can see a complete and natural example of this kind of ecosystem, along with other areas where the forest is growing back.
How Did the Forest Become Petrified?
Long, long ago, Puyango was actually a sea! The oldest fossils found here are from marine animals. Over millions of years, this sea dried up, and forests and animals began to live there. Then, huge natural events, like floods or volcanic eruptions, buried these living things underground.
Over even more millions of years, the buried wood and other organisms slowly turned into stone. This process is called petrification. Minerals in the groundwater soaked into the wood, replacing the original plant material with stone, but keeping the shape and details of the wood. Later, movements of the Earth's crust pushed these fossilized remains back up to the surface. This created the incredible fossil forest we see today! The most recent fossils are about 60 million years old, while the oldest ones can be up to 500 million years old.
Amazing Fossil Discoveries
The main reason people visit Puyango Petrified Forest is to see the amazing petrified trees. These trees belong to a group called Araucarioxylon. They are about 100 million years old! This forest might have the largest collection of petrified wood in the world. The biggest fossil tree found here is huge – it's 2 meters (about 6.5 feet) wide and 15 meters (about 49 feet) long!
You can also find fossils of leaves from four types of ancient plants. These plants looked a bit like today's ferns and palms. A famous scientist named Robert E. Shoemaker studied the area in the 1970s. He said that the amount of petrified tree trunks packed into such a small area makes it one of the biggest collections of its kind anywhere. It's even compared to the famous Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, USA!
Protecting Nature and Wildlife
In 1987, the Puyango area was declared a protected forest. This was done to help save its natural resources, especially some of the last remaining dry forests in the region. Today, the forest is managed by local governments to keep it safe.
Puyango is also very important for birds. In 2005, it was named an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International. There are 161 different kinds of birds recorded in the Puyango Protected Forest! This includes 43 species that live only in the dry forests of western Ecuador and northwestern Peru. It's a great place for birdwatching and learning about unique wildlife.
See also
In Spanish: Bosque petrificado de Puyango para niños
