Q 01/05

Petrified Forest National Park is in which U.S. state?

A) Arizona

B) New Mexico

C) Utah

D) Nevada

Answer · why

A) Arizona

Arizona skips daylight saving time, so the park's clocks stay on Mountain Standard Time all year and visitors arriving from neighbouring states often ...

Q 02/05

Explorers from which country are said to have named the Painted Desert?

A) Spain

B) France

C) Portugal

D) Britain

Answer · why

A) Spain

Spain's explorers, the story goes, called the coloured hills El Desierto Pintado, yet the oldest Spanish inscriptions found in the park date only to t...

Q 03/05

Which Petrified Forest site, seen only from an overlook, holds more than 650 ancient petroglyphs?

A) Jasper Forest

B) Kachina Point

C) Newspaper Rock

D) Blue Mesa

Answer · why

C) Newspaper Rock

Newspaper Rock is really a cluster of rock faces that generations of Puebloan farmers kept adding to, so its crowded panels cannot be read as one stor...

Q 04/05

What geographic term describes Petrified Forest's colourful, deeply eroded and mostly bare hills?

A) Badlands

B) Moraines

C) Karst

D) Drumlins

Answer · why

A) Badlands

Badlands form here because the clay in the hills swells when wet and cracks as it dries, so plants cannot take root and heavy rains strip the bare slo...

Q 05/05

Petrified Forest's trees grew when the first dinosaurs were appearing, during which geologic epoch?

A) Late Jurassic

B) Late Triassic

C) Early Cretaceous

D) Late Permian

Answer · why

B) Late Triassic

Late Triassic trees were not felled in one catastrophe: over millions of years they died, washed into rivers and were buried in sediment before they c...