Stone Forest, Shilin

The Shilin Stone Forest, in Yunnan Province, China, is a dense cluster of gray limestone pinnacles, some rising more than 30 meters, that give the appearance of a petrified forest of stone trees, carved from limestone deposited in a shallow sea roughly 270 million years ago during the Permian period. Following tectonic uplift, the limestone was exposed to prolonged chemical weathering by slightly acidic rainwater, which dissolved the rock preferentially along vertical joints and fractures, gradually widening them into deep grooves and isolating the rock between them into closely spaced, tapering pillars, a karst process classified as pinnacle or stone-forest karst. The Stone Forest is regarded as one of the finest and most extensive examples of this karst type in the world and forms part of the South China Karst UNESCO World Heritage property.