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2. The Ancient Petrified Forest
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Rising in the Kunene Region, the Petrified Forest offers an amazing window into the far past of Earth. Transformed into stone by mineralisation, these ancient tree trunks have roughly 280 million year origins. There are hundreds of well preserved down to their cellular structure fossilised tree trunks on the site, some measuring up to 30 meters. The trees are thought to have been buried behind layers of silt and pushed downstream by prehistoric floods, where mineral-rich water progressively replaced their organic content with stone. These prehistoric relics are strikingly set against the surrounding terrain, which is peppered with unusual desert-adapted flora including the well-known Welwitschia mirabilis, so giving tourists an amazing trip across geological time.
