The Petrified Forest Protected Area in New Cairo preserves wood transformed into stone over millions of years. Its geological record reaches back to the Oligocene, with concentrations of trunks connected to ancient water, sediment and environmental change. It is not a living forest preserved intact in place.
The area became a nature reserve in 1989. Today the setting is open desert, yet wood textures surviving in stone suggest a different past. The experience shifts between close observation of a fossilised trunk and the dry landscape around it, making the contrast between geological periods the site’s central story.
