111: 5 Fascinating Fun Facts about Petrified Forest National Park

Exploring the National Parks

Dirt In My Shoes

Science, Society & Culture:places & Travel, Nature, Places & Travel, Society & Culture

4.8 • 653 Ratings

🗓️ 16 April 2025

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Join us for a flashback in time as we dive into fun facts about Petrified Forest National Park! In this episode of Exploring the National Parks, we're going back to the desert to take you on a journey through a prehistoric world that was once a lush, tropical paradise teeming with bizarre and terrifying creatures. We’re sharing the top five surprising and fascinating facts about this ancient landscape that will completely change the way you see Petrified Forest National Park and turn it into a must-see national park for you! Today, we’ll be discussing: The shocking difference between the Petrified Forest in the past and how it looks now Why this park is a crucial window into the dawn of the dinosaurs, thanks to its incredibly preserved Triassic-aged rocks How this national park protects one of the largest concentrations of petrified wood in the world The shocking and massive geological unconformity at Petrified Forest The fascinating connection this park has to Route 66 We hope you enjoyed these fun facts all about Petrified Forest National Park! If you're ever in Arizona, be sure to visit and see the remnants of a prehistoric time for yourself! Don’t forget your task for today! Head over to our Facebook or Instagram page at Dirt In My Shoes and tell us: What are you excited about? The Triassic-aged rocks, fossils, and dinosaurs? Or are you more excited about seeing the petrified trees? Let us know! For a full summary of this episode, links to things we mentioned, and free resources/deals to get your trip-planning started, check out the full show notes.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You can see how the dinosaurs and the archosaurs and the pterosaurs, how they ended up winning the arms race to evolve the best tools.
0:10.3	And if you can't see what I'm doing right now, it's because this is a podcast, but I have, I'm, I'm, he's doing like little velociraptor arms.
0:20.2	Exactly.
0:20.7	I couldn't help it. Itor arms. Exactly.
0:21.5	I couldn't help it.
0:22.8	It just happened.
0:29.3	This is the Exploring the National Parks podcast with Dirt in My Shoes.
0:33.8	My Name is Ash and I'm a former park ranger and the founder of Dirt in My Shoes.
0:37.9	I think that the parks are best seen from the trail and I'm here to make National Park trip planning easy and I'm John I carry the kids on the trails
0:42.6	tell stories and notice all the things that Ash doesn't care about much like
0:46.4	trees join us as we show you around America's spectacular national parks
0:52.7	we're sharing our favorite places fun facts adventures, adventures, and misadventures.
0:57.1	And we'll even throw in a little trip planning.
0:59.9	Let's start exploring.
1:07.0	So we were down in St. George, Utah, which is near Zion National Park, if you're not familiar with that.
1:15.8	But we went down there for a fun little weekend trip, and I went canyoneering.
1:21.3	Yeah, you did.
1:22.4	I was so proud of myself.
1:24.9	If you don't know what canyering is, it's basically where you go through a
1:29.7	canyon with ropes, so you're repelling through the canyon. And a lot of times, because you canyere a lot
1:36.7	in the southwest, and a lot of times it's more slot canyon-y, which is really cool. Yes, it's super
1:44.0	is. So anyway, I just wanted to brag a minute for my lot canyony, which is really cool. Yes, it's super.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Dirt In My Shoes, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Dirt In My Shoes and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.