FLAGSTAFF — Scientists started drilling an 1,800-foot deep rock core Thursday in Petrified Forest National Park.
The tedious project will last two weeks as the rock is extracted in five-foot sections, marked and prepared to be shipped by truck to a laboratory.
Paleontologists say the rock record will cover from about 230 million to 207 million years ago and provide a detailed picture of how Petrified Forest moved from a wet environment to a much drier one.
Park paleontologist Bill Parker says fossils at Petrified Forest show a shift over 20 million years from an environment rich in semi-aquatic creatures and plants like cattails, to one with coniferous trees and ferns. Perhaps most interesting is that small dinosaurs — rare in the Petrified Forest — slowly become more abundant in the area during that period. Elsewhere in the world, dinosaurs were already much more common at the time.
The nearly $1 million project near Chinde Point in the northern portion of the park is fenced off, but the public is welcome to watch. The drill is mounted to the back of a large truck. Scientists will also be on site and able to answer questions about their research.
Their ultimate goal is to create a monumental 100 million-year climate history of the Colorado Plateau through five separate drilling projects. The Petrified Forest core is the first. The time frame of all five stretches from 150 million to 250 million years ago and covers two mass extinctions, as well as the rise of the dominance of dinosaurs.
“Those two mass extinctions were caused by massive global climate change so there’s really something to learn about how the rise in global greenhouse gases affects life on Earth,” said principal investigator Randy Irmis from the University of Utah.
