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Be one of the few that get out of the car and explore something! I tell my grandkids to join the 1% club, that only 1% ever get out of their car to see any back country where the real wild life lives.
Park at 46 59.758 103 36.288 for the gate into the park from the back side. Or you can park inside TRNP if you like to climb buttes and wade rivers.
Watch for Bison and Rattlesnakes....
You will be entering the South Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Please review the "Related Web Page' link near the top of the page for the all park rules and requirements. If you have any questions please call the visitors center at 701-623-4466. And remember, take nothing, leave nothing.
After locating the stump at the mark please email me the answers to the following questions:
1) Is the stump standing upright or laying down?
2) What is the diameter of the stump at it's widest point?
3) What is the height of the stump?
During the Paleocene epoch, between about 67 and 55 million years ago, western North Dakota was home to a subtropical to temperate forest with trees up to 12 feet in diameter and over 100 feet tall. During this time, western North Dakota must have looked much like coastal Georgia or Mississippi, with meandering rivers, everglade-like swamps, and vast, forested floodplains.
Petrified trees, stumps, and logs provide some of the most spectacular evidence for this ancient landscape. North Dakota's Paleocene-age rocks contain most of the petrified wood found in the state. The petrified wood occurs as entire logs, stumps that still stand upright where they once grew, and as scattered limbs and fragments. Some localities contain so much fossil wood that they can be termed petrified forests. Petrified wood is widespread in western North Dakota, and pieces of it can also be found in gravels in the glaciated portion of the state. It is commonly found in badlands areas, where entire logs and even upright stumps are exposed.
Petrified wood forms by the gradual mineral replacement of the organic material as it lies buried underground. Petrification requires rapid burial of the wood to prevent normal decay. This can happen, for example, as rivers overflow their banks, burying the forest floor under a layer of sand and silt. After burial, mineralized groundwater begins to seep through the wood, coating cell walls and filling the intercellular cavities. Sometimes the original cellular structure is obliterated and what remains is simply a cast of the original log; other times, growth rings, bark, knots, and even cellular structure is preserved with remarkable fidelity. Small amounts of impurities add color to the fossilized wood: yellow, brown and red indicate iron; black and purple take their hue from carbon or manganese.
North Dakota petrified wood is variously preserved, from specimens that are well silicified, to splintery, and even grading to lignite coal (coalified trees). The degree of petrification can even vary within a single specimen; individual stumps or logs sometimes contain both well silicified and coalified parts. Most North Dakota petrified wood is brown or tan on weathered surfaces and dark brown where fresh, but colors range from white to gray, sometimes with streaks of black. Sometimes, cavities in the wood are encrusted with chalcedony and lined with quartz crystals. Often, because they were compressed and flattened by the weight of overlying sediments, the logs are oval in cross section.
The best known petrified forest in North Dakota is found in the South Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. There, coniferous stumps from two successive forests have eroded out of the Sentinel Butte Formation. These trees are related to the modern Sequoia; some stumps are up to 12 feet in diameter. The stumps are still upright in the place where they grew 55 million years ago in a coastal floodplain environment. The stumps were preserved as floods inundated the forest floor, burying the bases of trees; the unburied trunks and branches simply decayed away. Often the stumps sprout from a lignite bed or paleosol horizon which itself marks a former forest or swamp floor.
North Dakota's ancient forests, with huge stumps and tree trunks, now form stunning landscapes of stone in the wildly eroded badlands of southwestern North Dakota. There, they mingle with modern, fragrant junipers, sagebrush, prickly pear cactus, and other hardy plants. North Dakota Geological Survey
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