Jaramillo Petrified Forest

Declared in 1954, it protects one of the largest and best preserved beds of fossilised araucaria trunks in the world, formed some 150 million years ago when the region — today arid Patagonian steppe — was covered in dense subtropical forest, before the eruption of nearby volcanoes buried and petrified the fallen trees in a matter of hours, preserving their original structure in exceptional detail.