Araripe Geopark

Araripe Geopark is a geological park, located in Ceará, Brazil. It is the first geological park in Brazil, recognized by UNESCO (global geopark).

It is located across six municipalities in Ceará: Barbalha, Crato, Juazeiro do Norte, Missão Velha, Nova Olinda, and Santana do Cariri. With a total area of 3,796 km², the park presents a vast biological, geological, and paleontological heritage.

Initially, part of its territory was recognized as the Environmental Protection Area of Chapada do Araripe since 1997, on the plateau between 700 and 900 meters high, located near the border of Ceará with the states of Piauí and Pernambuco.

It holds one of the largest deposits of fossils from Lower Cretaceous in Brazil and in the world. This includes the largest concentration of pterosaur remains in the world, as well as 20 different orders of fossilized insects, approximately 110 million years old. It also contains preserved fossils of the earliest flowering plants, which demonstrate primitive interactions between insects and plants. Since September 2006, it has been integrated into the Global Geoparks Network and is recognized by UNESCO as a relevant geological and paleontological heritage of the world. It was the first geological park recognized in the Americas.

One of the objectives of the geological park is to preserve the natural wealth of Chapada do Araripe.

Geosites
In Araripe UNESCO Global Geopark there are nine geosites. Each geosite characterizes a different period of this region’s geological time.


 * Colina do Horto
 * Cachoeira de Missão Velha
 * Floresta Petrificada do Cariri
 * Batateira
 * Pedra Cariri
 * Parque dos Pterossauros
 * Riacho do Meio
 * Ponte de Pedra
 * Pontal de Santa Cruz

In pop culture
Several dinosaurs, pterosaurs, fish, and plants from the Geological Park of Araripe appear in the Brazilian science fiction work Hidden Reality.