Travel & Experiences

Offbeat Traveler: U.S. submissions for UNESCO’s World Heritage list

The Petrified Forest in eastern Arizona contains the world's largest collection of petrified wood, trees whose organic matter has been replaced by minerals over millions of years. The fossils of about 78 animal species have also been found here. The park's fossil cache has been a valuable source of information for the Late Triassic period (about 225 to 205 million years ago). Aside from petrified wood, the Petrified Forest features colorful badlands and hundreds of petroglyphs. More info: http://www.nps.gov/pefo/index.htm

The Petrified Forest in eastern Arizona contains the world’s largest collection of petrified wood, trees whose organic matter has been replaced by minerals over millions of years. The fossils of about 78 animal species have also been found here. The park’s fossil cache has been a valuable source of information for the Late Triassic period (about 225 to 205 million years ago). Aside from petrified wood, the Petrified Forest features colorful badlands and hundreds of petroglyphs. More info: http://www.nps.gov/pefo/index.htm  (Jason La / Los Angeles Times)

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The UNESCO World Heritage Committee is meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia starting this week to consider sites for inscription to its prestigious list. Though the committee’s roster of 36 nominations doesn’t include domestic sites, the United States’ tentative list, the pool from which nominees are drawn, names 13 praise-worthy sites. Here are a look at three intriguing places on the list, including White Sands National Monument in New Mexico, Fagatele Bay National Marine Sanctuary in American Samoa and Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.

Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona

The Painted Desert, a colorful collection of hills, buttes and mesas carved by millions of years of erosion.   (Jason La / Los Angeles Times)

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