Petrified Forest description and photos - Greece: Lesvos Island (Topic)

Petrified Forest description and photos - Greece: Lesvos Island. Detailed information about the attraction. Description, photographs and a map showing the nearest significant objects. The name in English is Petrified Forest.

Photo and description

One of the most interesting and popular sights of the Greek island of Lesvos is undoubtedly the famous Petrified Forest, which received the status of a natural monument in 1985. It is located in the western part of the island, between the settlements of Sigri, Eressos and Antissa and covers an area of 150 square kilometers (single fossils are scattered almost all over the island). This is one of the largest clusters of fossilized trees in the world.

The history of the Petrified Forest began about 20 million years ago, when, as a result of intense volcanic activity in the North Aegean region, the island of Lesvos was under a layer of volcanic ash and lava, which is actually was the reason for the formation of this amazing natural monument. Thanks, among other things, to favorable climatic conditions, The morphological features of the island vegetation have been perfectly preserved to this day and have made it possible to identify more than forty different plant species, a significant part of which are representatives of such families as pine, yew, cypress, laurel and beech. There are also such plants as birch, alder, hornbeam, willow, persimmon, poplar, lime, maple, blackberry and various types of palm trees. In the fossilized forest, very rare species were also found that have no modern descendants. Overall, the Lesvos Forest is an excellent example of the Lower Miocene Aegean ecosystem.

Today, the Lesvos Petrified Forest is an impressive park with hundreds of fallen and erect petrified tree trunks, with perfectly preserved root systems. The petrified branches, leaves, fruits and some fossils and prints of animals that lived on Lesvos millions of years ago. It was here that the world's tallest petrified tree was found standing upright (7.20 m in height and 8.58 m in diameter).

The petrified forest is managed by the Natural History Museum of Lesvos located in Sigri.

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Topic: Petrified Forest description and photos - Greece: Lesvos Island.