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Yet another Fossil Wood Park is at Sathanur near Trichy. Please make a visit to any of these three
places with your kids. The kids will be thrilled ( Atleast I presume !! I know , kids these days are glued to
their Play Stations and video games) !!
These reddish tree trunks( once upon a time) are the fossils20 million years old.The huge Banyan tree behind has fresh trees
More Fossils
!!
This was near the base of one of the tree trunks. A sculpture on a rock. Couldn't make out who the God
seated in the middle is, flanked by two other figures. May be the ASI could throw some light on
this.Obviously, Pooja is being done
here.
Broken pieces of sculpture found near the Temple, under one of the trees.
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What exactly is a fossil wood park? Long, long ago, once a upon a time, about two
million years ago, our great great grandparents, as stone age men, chopped wood.
Wood means not branches and twigs, Im talking about huge, wide, tree
trunks! Some which were even 30meters long and 1.5 meters in diameter. I dunno
what they used it for. But then, along the river, these tree trunks got buried in the
course of time.
Over time, the organic matter inside them got replaced by silica and they got
fossilized. They retained their color and shape and texture, but got rock solid! Some
were very interesting. See the above photo. Doesnt the texture look like the Om
symbol?
The best part is that you can still see the annular rings, the texture, colors of the
layers, nodes, everything It looks so much like wood, but feels like stone!
In technical terms, they are the Mio-Pliocene Sedimentary rocks. These rocks
here are called Cuddalore sandstone formations. Around 200 such tree trunks have
been found in this region in an area that covers 247 acres. All such fossil woods
have been collected from various places in the surroundings and placed here in an
open air museum kinda set up.
The European naturalist M. Sonneret was the first one to document the existence of
such trees here in this region in 1781. Presently, this is maintained by GSI, the
Geological Survey of India!
Think of it, its two million years ago. The trees that were there at that point of
time may not even exist today. Its like a treasury! A particular variety of tree
The place also has a huge central banyan tree which is 300 years old. No, it was not
as big as
But this one too had a little village deity beneath it and some votive figures of
horses o