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by elihu 1915 days ago
I don't think much would be left of a person, but in central Oregon near Bend there's a park called the Lava Cast Forest, which is what it sounds like. About seven thousand years ago or so, there were some lava flows that engulfed live trees. The lava solidified, and what was left of the trees decomposed.

Now, what's left is a bunch of hollow tubes that are castings of the trees. You can still see the texture of the bark.

I assume this sort of thing exists in other lava flows around the world.

1 comments

A trail around Mt St Helens (Trail of Two Forests, https://www.wta.org/go-hiking/hikes/trail-of-two-forests) has that kind of thing. There is a short tunnel you can crawl through - two trees were laying 90 degrees to each other overlapping when covered with lava. The entrance reminded me of a scene of a typical campy B horror movie (No! Don't go in that cave! The Monster is in there!) I wish I thought to scream to my wife when I crawled in (pretending the Monster got me) -- only thought of it later :-).