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The Painted Desert:
The Painted Desert stretches before you as an outdoor museum of fossilized plants and animals. Its striking colors emanate from the Chinle Formation of the Late Triassic which has been eroded by the Little Colorado River drainage system.
An aerial view of the Painted Desert reveals tie-dyed corrugated hills or highly colored sedimentary rock, mostly soft, fine-grained mudstone and claystone. Also present are harder beds of more somber-colored siltstone, sandstone, and conglomerates. The wide range of reddish color in these rocks is due to the presence of iron minerals.
The Chinle Formation is a storehouse of plant and animal fossils that provide evidence of a time when giant amphibians and reptiles ruled the Earth. If you look deep into the Painted Desert, you may see large fragments of petrified wood. |