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A Jurassic petrified forest in the Thar — ~180-million-year-old tree trunks turned to stone. A National Geological Monument.

Scattered across the desert near Jaisalmer lie the petrified trunks of a Jurassic forest — trees that grew about 180 million years ago, when this corner of the Thar was a warm, well-watered coast on the edge of Gondwana. Buried in sediment and slowly mineralised, their wood was replaced grain-for-grain by silica, freezing the growth rings in stone. The site is a National Geological Monument.

The logs sit within the Jurassic rocks of the Jaisalmer Basin, which also preserve marine limestones and shelly fossils — a record that the sea flooded and withdrew from this now-arid land more than once.

Sources

• Geological Survey of India — National Geological Monuments

A short reference note: this summary draws on third-party sources such as the Geological Survey of India and Wikipedia. In time I plan to give every geological feature its own learning-oriented write-up — with custom diagrams, graphs, and study pointers — as I’ve already done for the 11 locations that have an Instagram reel.