Yellowstone's Fabulous Fossil Forest: petrified trees encased in volcanic mudflows and ash

Enjoy the majestic views and spectacular geology high on Specimen Ridge in Yellowstone National Park. This unique location harbors dozens of stately fossilized (petrified) trees: some upright, some horizontal. Learn about the violent volcanic episode that entombed these huge trees about 50 million years ago with geology professor Shawn Willsey. (sorry for the sniffles, it was a chilly morning!)
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Shawn Willsey
College of Southern Idaho
315 Falls Avenue
Twin Falls, ID 83303
Video GPS location: 44.89467, -110.33446

[@shawnwillsey]

You can support my geology field videos by going here: www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=EWUSLG3GBS5W8 Thanks!

[@drock5404]

This is fascinating! Thank you

[@canberroo2509]

The horizontal logs almost look like they've been clean saw cut at a 90 degree angle... Guessing it's just the way fractures propagate through the stone overtime..

[@madhammer232]

U are correct till you weren't

[@hestheMaster]

I never knew a petrified forest existed in Yellowstone. Just plain cool. Thank for showing it professor.

[@Danwilsey]

Awesome class Shawn, love the field trips .beautifully done., Dan wilsey signing out ✌ OUT..

[@Danika_Nadzan]

Holy smokes, Shawn, the vertiginous view was heart-stopping at times! I'm glad you're part mountain goat, because otherwise I'd never get to see these awesome places! The petrification process boggles my mind, especially when the intricate details of the tree's structure are so beautifully retained. Thank you for making that hike/climb!

[@AvanaVana]

Wow, Shawn, another breathtaking site and story! Here you’ve tapped into two of my big pet interests, Paleogene paleoclimate (particularly the Eocene greenhouse and Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum) and the utterly mysterious Absaroka volcanic province. By mysterious, of course, I am referring to the precise tectonic setting (not an arc!) as well as paleogeography (province was very far inland from the active margin). Some absolutely beautiful specimens on that hillside. Any idea as to identification? Metasequoia? A few years ago they planted a Metasequoia in my neighborhood park (Tompkins Square Park) here in NYC and I try to get my son excited about the fact that both dinosaurs and ancient mammalian megafauna dined on its leaves still survives today, relatively unchanged, but it’s me who gets the most excited. I swear, one of these days I will take the time to walk in your footsteps and see all these amazing outcrops with my own eyes.

[@shawnwillsey]

I think many of them are metasequoias. I remember reading something like 30+ species documented along Specimen Ridge so it was a very diverse forest. Come on out and see this geology when you can.

[@SusanS588]

Really enjoying your series in Yellowstone as the flooding event caused me to cancel my trip. Really enjoy seeing things close up like these trees and the Mt. Everts unconformity that I’ve only seen through binoculars.

[@robertfallows1054]

Wow I wish I’d seen some of your videos before I visited Yellowstone. Very interesting. I’ve seen petrified trees before but that one that that was laying horizontal at the end of the video looked real.

[@leemaples1806]

Fascinating landscape with the petrified redwoods. I`m having some ideas of how it came to be, for one; the trees became partially buried in maybe 10 feet or so, burned on top then submerged in a cold shallow deposit, then uplifted to expose a forest that once was there? or something to that effect. ;-)

[@TheDanEdwards]

The question is: why is there a volcanic arc (Absaroka) so far away from the coast. The USGS page on this volcanic field suggests a crustal extension event but then also downplays that. Is Absaroka yet another phenomenon attributed to the shallow subduction of the Farallon plate?

[@beachbum200009]

About 200 million yrs ago Idaho was the coast. A series of exotic terranes some riding in on plates and N. America ran in to each other. The last of these terranes hit about 50 million yrs ago... the same time that was stated in this video. There is a chance that the Yellowstone hot spot was in the ocean and created one of the terranes that hit the continent. As the continent moved over the hot spot some of the eruptions can be tracked where the Snake river is today as the continent move to it's current spot, placing the hot spot in Wyoming. About 16 million yrs ago the continent moved over the hot spot and it may have caused the volcanic flooding that buried a huge area of Washington state 3 miles deep. Nick Zentner has videos on all of this.

[@patmayer7222]

Hello from land o' lakes,wi...tnx,for this great insite,,,,,...makes us want to see this area soon.....no doubt,,,a place to visit...we live in the northwoods,N.michigan,,,..so ,seeing petrified remains would be a highlite........great footage also...and your story behind the vid.....pat& family.....................

[@marymainville4214]

When the Mt St Helen volcano exploded in Washington did it cause trees to become petrified as well?

[@Anne5440_]

Fabulous, I had heard about that forest. But when in Yellowstone we never were able to make it up to Specimen Ridge. I have been to Ginkgo park in WA many times. Thanks for showing us this place. I didn't know about Absoroka volcanos. I got to go into the Bear Tooth area on one Yellowstone trip.

[@Dave_9547]

In the early 1980's my dad was logging in N. Calif and found some tree fragments that had been buried by natural earth slippage along a creek. They were almost black in color and appeared to be mineralized or petrified. He brought some chunks home, but over a period of about twenty years they started to deteriorate back into wood. I guess they hadn't been buried long enough to make the process complete?

[@MrFmiller]

My sons and I went to “the woodpile” in Idaho during the summer. There was a lot of smaller branches and chips scattered at the surface but no obvious logs. What may have once been there has probably long been picked over. We dug a couple of pits and found a few sizable remnants but nothing with complete cross section of any appreciable size. There were quite a few pits left open from previous digs. We didn’t dedicate a lot of time to it but still came out with a couple gallons of good specimens. I’ll saw and polish much of it and create displays.

[@piotrrajmundkoprowski4732]

I will probably never go there, so I would like to thank you for this beautiful presentation, sir. Please more.

[@stewartbrands]

That large tree is very interesting. You show the lahar material under the roots which means it grew on top of the lahr material correct? If that is true and you said the lahar was a slurry that deposited in the lowland. Therefore that suggests the tree was in a lowland which would explain its burial up the trunk. But it is now not in a lowland and if so the land was lifted. If it was lifted how is it that the tree is upright plum with no lahar material around the trunk. What are the odds that it would be lifted exactly perpendicularly? How to make sense of the combination of factors there? Maybe you could unravel that?

[@mikekirk1513]

I would love to be able to visit Yellowstone National park one of these days. Thanks 👍 for the tour.

[@Fryed_Bryce]

I've been high on Specimen Ridge before. In fact i've been high all over that park

[@hueyiroquois3839]

I never knew that the petrified forest was a real thing. I always thought it was made up for an old cartoon.

[@charonsiouxsie949]

If comments help, I can always leave a mark of gratitude.

[@kenhansew7892]

Wow! Don’t stop making these! You are a fount of cool info!!

[@rogercotman1314]

As before, thanks Shawn for your effort to hike to these various fascinating geological sites. Very educational video ............... Like 773

[@shawnwillsey]

Glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for watching.

[@malcolmanon4762]

How far up has that area been uplifted? As I'm curious to know if the temperate climate was casued because the area was at a lower altitude - or was the global / regional climate just warmer?

[@shawnwillsey]

I'm not sure what exact elevation the Yellowstone region was at about 50 million years ago. Likely lower with warmer, more temperate weather world wide.

[@richardcox7266]

Great video but the audio was terrible. Sniffing every few seconds was most annoying.

[@shawnwillsey]

Sorry about that. It was a very chilly morning.

[@christymartin6281]

Is it possible to know what species of tree a piece of petrified wood is from? I found a piece in river tumbled 3" cobbles, and always wondered where it came from, (in WA state).

[@shawnwillsey]

Paleobotanists can often tell the genus or species of plant from the texture of wood or leaf fossils.

[@375santa]

Thank you in advance for your good video. I downloaded your video to my blog to watch over and over to see and learn English and geology. I majored in geology in college long time ago. Thanks again. Have good time always. Korea Seoul

[@shawnwillsey]

Thanks for watching and glad these are helpful.

[@mizzougrad001]

I wonder if dendrologists can identify the petrified trees' species by the pattern of the bark and root structure...

[@shawnwillsey]

Yes, they can. Or at least the genus. The preservation is often good enough to deduce this information.

[@davidk7324]

Thanks for this, Shawn--

[@gregdavidd]

very interesting, sniff, sniff

[@Raptorman0909]

Yellowstone is one of the most majestically beautiful places on Earth and the Lamar Valley is our Serengeti. Did you have any problems with road closures due to the flooding earlier this year and did you encounter any Bears or Wolves?

[@shawnwillsey]

Heard wolves at night in the Lamar Valley but didn't see any. No bears sited either. Lots of bison. There were closures around Mammoth from the flooding and the bridge I wanted to take to access an area for a video was washed out so I had to wade the river to get across.

[@Raptorman0909]

@@shawnwillsey The Lamar valley is one of the most amazing place in the Americas for wildlife, our Serengeti, interesting that there is also a great Geological story around it as well.

[@bottomup12]

Really amazing to see! That scene begs for a CGI film to try and depict the lahar event/s. I guess picture Mt St Helens x10.

[@secularsunshine9036]

*Let the Sunshine In*

[@davidbamford4721]

Thanks for that Shawn. I was talking with a fellow-geologist many years ago; he was telling me that wooden fence posts on the family farm have had siliceous replacement at the base which was buried in the local soil. This, of course has implications for the speed of the replacement process.

[@noahcount7132]

Shawn, there's a KZbin video posted by another geologist who posits that these petrified tree specimens were transported here and deposited by a glacier. It has been some years since I saw that video, and don't remember who posted it. Which one of you is correct?

[@shawnwillsey]

The Eocene (age of these rocks and fossils) was very warm and no glaciers existed here at that time. How would a glacier transport a tree?

[@noahcount7132]

@@shawnwillsey I hadn't a clue, Shawn. That's why I queried an expert. Thanks for your response. 👍

[@Helix-ge1ld]

Impressive

[@stevewhalen6973]

Thanks!

[@nachoperez6409]

Awesome!

[@3xHermes]

👍

[@robmcelwee389]

Thanks so much for posting this! I wish there was books this subject.

[@johnlaforte700]

Why do the trees look like they were cut flat?😊

[@shawnwillsey]

Fractures and freeze-thaw cycles.

[@michalejones77]

Amazing video! Thanks for sharing!

[@lambofsquirrel]

How far from the road is this site?

[@shawnwillsey]

Maybe a mile or two from the road and an ascent of about 600 feet.

[@stanfullerton8485]

so neat---saw the one in the steel fence when I was a little kid

[@steveneiffel8227]

Having a cold?

[@shawnwillsey]

No, just the sniffles due to the cold morning.

[@randallgd]

Thank you very much!

[@seansheehan8430]

Pronounced Absaroka

[@seansheehan8430]

Love your videos, we have a lot of geology around here. Absaroka is the English corruption of the Crow name for themselves; Apsolooka.

[@patrickkillilea5225]

Awesome!

[@princesseyesparkle]

So cool!