Centro di Paleontologia Vegetale, Natural history museum in Avigliano Umbro, Italy.
The Plant Paleontology Center is a museum in Avigliano Umbro that displays approximately 50 fossilized conifer trunks still positioned where they were found. The trunks reveal the wood structures and characteristics of trees that lived here in ancient times.
This site emerged from excavations in a clay quarry during the 1970s, when workers uncovered a petrified forest buried in the earth. The research center was established in the late 1990s to preserve and study these remarkable remains.
The center reveals how plant life and climate differed in this region millions of years ago. Visitors can learn which species thrived here and how the landscape looked during that ancient time.
Access to the site requires joining a guided tour led by someone familiar with the fossils and geology. Wear sturdy shoes since you'll be walking on uneven, outdoor ground that can become slippery when wet.
The trees here lived approximately 3 to 2 million years ago in conditions very different from today's climate and landscape. Their fossils show that the area was once covered in forest and had much warmer temperatures.
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