AMBER NEWS
Ipswich Borough Museums and Galleries - Saturday afternoon lecture
AMBER FROM SOUTHERN ENGLAND - Saturday 21 March
An afternoon talk at Ipswich Museum, by amber expert Dr Ed Jarzembowski,
Amber has been washed ashore in Suffolk for thousands of years. It is much prized for jewellery making and its strange properties have given it an air of mystery. More recently studies on insects trapped in amber have been the basis of films such as Jurassic Park. Yet much is still to be learned, How is it formed ? Where does it come from ? Is Jurassic Park really possible ? Find out about the formation, properties and uses of amber and learn how to cut and polish your own finds. The talk lasts about an hour and a half.Starting at 2.00pm, tickets £3.00 available in advance from Ipswich Museum, tickets reserved by phone can be collected up to ten minutes before the lecture starts.
For further details contact;
Ipswich Museum,
High Street,
IpswichIP1 3QH
tel: 01473 213761
Personal Correspondence
(13 MARCH 1998)
40-million-year-old lizard in amber
Monday, February 02, 1998
WARSAW, Poland (Reuters) - Polish scientists are studying a lizard that has been preserved in Baltic amber for 40 million years, the head of Warsaw's Museum of the Earth said Monday.
``This is important as lizards have been found in Dominican amber, but for Baltic amber this is a real rarity due to the state of conservation,'' said Krzysztof Jakubowski, director of the museum under the Polish Academy of Sciences.
``We will only know what academic significance it may have after detailed research,'' Jakubowski told Reuters.
The lizard, the second known to have been discovered in amber on the Baltic coast in a century, was found near the city of Gdansk by a local jeweler who passed it on to the museum.
^REUTERS@
(3 FEBRUARY 1998)
Embargoed For Release: 28 January 1998 at 14:00:00 ET US
Contact: Elizabeth Chapman
chapman@amnh.org
212-769-5800
American Museum of Natural History
American Museum Of Natural History Researchers Announce Discovery Of Oldest Known Fossil Ants - 92-Million-Year-Old Fossils Found In New Jersey Amber
January 29, 1998 -- A team of researchers from the American Museum of Natural History announced today in the journal Nature the discovery of the oldest fossil ants ever found. The extremely rare 92-million-year-old ants are preserved in amber from a location in New Jersey that has produced some of the world's most important amber-encased fossils. The new specimens are 50 million years older than the most ancient fossils that were clearly recognized as ants; the find thus proves unequivocally the existence of ants back into the Age of the Dinosaurs. The new specimens have important implications for understanding both the origin of ants and their rise to a position of ecological dominance in the world today.
The new ant specimens are of particular consequence because they show the presence of a "metapleural gland," which is the distinguishing anatomical feature of ants and is a key to their ability to live in colonies underground or in rotting trees. This gland, found above the hind legs, secretes a substance that functions as an antibiotic and prevents bacteria and fungi from invading the ants' nests and infecting the members of the colony. The development of this gland is believed to be associated with the evolution of the ants' social system, which has been a key factor in their tremendous ecological dominance. Ants are so successful that they represent up to 25% of the total animal biomass in Amazonia; even in New York City's Central Park they are, by weight, the most common creature.
The new specimens comprise three worker and four male ants. One of the workers is a complete, well-preserved specimen from the group known as Sphecomyrma freyi, a primitive kind of ant. This insect was first described in 1967 by renowned entomologist E.O. Wilson and his colleagues, but because no metapleural gland was clearly visible, it was uncertain at that time whether it was truly an ant. The new fossil ant in amber resolves the debate over the identity of this ancient insect. Of the remaining fossil ants, two of the males are a new species of Baikuris (which previously had only been found in Siberian amber), a third male is from an undetermined genus, and the fourth male may be a Sphecomyrma freyi and would therefore be the first known male of this group. The two other workers represent a new genus that is much more advanced than Sphecomyrma, and is related to a group of ants, the subfamily Ponerinae, that are widely distributed in tropical and subtropical areas today. (Most of these ants today are known for their powerful stings.) The discovery of both primitive and more advanced fossil ants in 92-million-year-old amber shows that the major lineages of ants arose before the great extinction at the end of the Cretaceous, 65 million years ago. A reasonable estimate would place the origin of ants in the Lower Cretaceous at about 130 million years ago.
Ant fossils from the Cretaceous Period are extremely rare, but those from the subsequent Tertiary are quite abundant, indicating that the great radiation of ants did not begin until the close of the Cretaceous -- a time that also marked the end of the Age of the Dinosaurs. The tantalizing question of what, in addition to their sociality, led to the unparalleled success of ants after this Period is still open.
The authors of the Nature paper are: Donat Agosti, research scientist; David A. Grimaldi, chairman and curator; and James Carpenter, curator, all of the American Museum of Natural History's Department of Entomology. Funding for the research was provided by American Museum of Natural History Trustee Henry G. Walter and by Henry and Meryl Silverstein.
(2 FEBRUARY 1998)The full academic report written by Dr David Grimaldi on this subject can bee seen at the following site:
Crime pays for Amber Chamber
restorers
04:08 a.m. Jan 16, 1998 Eastern
ST PETERSBURG, Russia, Jan 15 (Reuters) - Crime is paying for the tsars' lost Amber Chamber as Russian customs officers handed over another illicit haul of the precious fossil resin on Thursday to the team reconstructing the fabled treasure.
The bad news for authorities in Russia's Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, source of most of the world's amber, is that smuggling of the substance is on the rise.
The bad news for smugglers is that more are being caught.
That adds up to good news for the restorers recreating the panels and furniture of the chamber, which were lost after being taken by German troops in 1941 from the Catherine Palace near St Petersburg. The contraband is handed over to the palace free.
``The amount of amber being seized by Kaliningrad customs is growing, which is increasing the chances of finally finishing the restoration of the Amber Chamber,'' Oleg Brykin, the deputy head of Kaliningrad customs, told Reuters after handing over the latest 630-kg (1,390-pound) haul at the Catherine Palace.
Restorer Vladimir Mezentsev warned, however, that an end to years of restoration work is nowhere near in sight. The whole job requires six tonnes (6.6 tons) of amber and only about a third of the contraband received is good enough to be used.
The original Amber Chamber was a gift to the tsar from Prussia in 1712. Kaliningrad, seized by Soviet troops in World War Two, was then the East Prussian city of Koenigsberg.
German police are still hunting for the priceless relic, which
was last seen -- in Koenigsberg -- in 1945. ^REUTERS@
(20 JANUARY 1998)
Taken from the BBC news
archives.
Sanchia Berg From Warsaw
Polish amber producers are calling for more mines to be opened. The Baltic area holds the largest amber deposits in the world. Over the last seven years Polish exports have increased five fold to 200 tons a year. Yet much of that is illegally mined or smuggled from the neighbouring Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. From Warsaw, our correspondent Sancha Berg reports:-
"Amber's back in fashion. Thanks to
films like Jurassic Park there's a growing appetite world wide
for this fossilised tree resin especially with pre-historic flies
inside. Polish amber exports are now worth more than $200 million
dollars a year. But only just over a million dollars worth can be
extracted within Poland. Local authorities are wary of granting
licenses for amber mining. They fear environmental damage. So
most amber comes from the neighbouring Russian enclave of
Kaliningrad to be polished, set and sold from Poland. Only a few
tons can be brought in legally, the rest is smuggled. Some comes
from a state owned mine, the rest from areas under military
control. In recent months, Polish customs officers have found
record quantities of amber, as much as 40 kilos hidden in a small
car. They believe organised gangs are behind the trade. For years
Polish amber producers have kept quiet about their suppliers, but
now they are owning up as they campaign for more mines in Poland.
The head of the amber association said "we don't want to be
dependent on these criminals anymore." Amber insiders say
the Russians have been trying to push up the prices in recent
months slowing down supply. Local Polish police support
legalisation too. The high demand has created an amber rush in
northern Poland as amateurs try their luck. One state forest is
now littered with dozens of deep and dangerous holes."
(20 JANUARY 1998)
The Isle of Wight site which has amber dating
back to the Cretaceous had until recently given up very few
pieces. Thanks however to the work of Martin Simpson on the
Island, more than 2000 pieces have been extracted and are
currently been processed; washed, examined and photographed by
the author of this web site. I will keep visitors to the site
informed of the progress of these pieces.
(4 JANUARY 1998)
The 'World Congress on Amber Inclusions' is to be held in Pais Vasco, Spain this year between the 20 and 23 October. It promises to be am major event in amber related studies with anybody who is anybody in this field being there. The principle speakers will be:
Dr. Curt W. Beck
Amber Research Laboratory. Department of Chemistry. Vassar
College, Poughkeepsie, New York, USA.
Dr. David A, Grimaldi
American Museum of Natural History.New York, USA.
Dr. George O. Poinar
University of California. Berkeley, CA. USA.
Dr. André Nel
Muséum National D'histoire Naturelle. Paris, France.
Dr. Barbara Kosmowska-Ceranowicz
Polska Akademia Nauk - Museum Zieme. Warszawa, Poland.
Dr. Vladmir Zherichin
Laboratory of Paleontomology, Russia Academy of Sciences. Moscow,
Russia.
For further details you should contact:
Congress Secretary
Alava Museum of Natural Sciencies
Siervas de Jesius, 24
E-01001 Vitoria-Gasteiz
Tel: +34 45 18 19 24
Fax: +34 45 18 19 19
E-mail: amber-congress@jet.es
(10 JANUARY 1998)
The International Amber Fair Amberif '98 will be held in Gdansk between the 5th and 8th of March during 1998. More information can be obtained from:
Fair Commissar - Dr Ewa Rachon
Mindzynarodowe Targi Gdanskie
ul. Beniowskiego 5
80-382 Gdansk
Poland
Tel No: +48 48 520 071, 523 600, 523 706.
Fax No: +48 56 522 168, 522 243
(14 DECEMBER 1997)
The New Scientist (18 October 1997) published a fascinating article which casts significant doubts on the validity of many scientists who claim to have extracted Ancient DNA from Amber.
The article was prompted by the conclusion of 3 years research by Richard Thomas and his team at London’s Natural History Museum who states: "It is highly unlikely that geologically ancient DNA survives in any fossil material so far studied."
Thomas’s research was aimed at trying to replicate the work of other scientist who believe they have extracted ancient DNA. His conclusions are clear, no DNA exists within ancient fossil resin. Thomas further states: "We worked with many more samples than the total number of published reports of success".
The research they have completed in this field looks impressive and the data they have collected is hard to refute. Rob DeSalle of the American Museum of Natural History is on record as saying: "The original studies look like bad science, I’m afraid, we have to deal with this now - The Natural History Museum’s work is very good, very well done,"
Michael Braun of the Smithsonian Museum states; "its the end of the story for very ancient DNA". But not everyone agrees, Raul Cano of California Polytechnic State University, one of the leading pro amber DNA researchers denies claims that the DNA he has isolated is the result of contamination. He claims: "Just because they failed doesn’t mean we did - They are too dogmatic in their conclusions".
For the record the author of these web pages believes the tide
has turned against Amber DNA research. For people who have yet to
make their mind up and are interested in the Amber/DNA debate
they should get hold of a copy of the New Scientist
publication, like all New Scientist articles it is
succinct, clear and clearly states the position today.
(27 October 1997)
Andrew Ross hopes to publish a new book on
amber during the course of 1998. The book entitled
‘Amber’, will include more than 100 original color
photographs based mainly on the NHM’s collection, many of
these pieces have never been seen before. There will also be a
key to identifying arthropods trapped in fossil resin down to
order and in many instances superfamily and family level. Book
format and price have yet to be agreed. The book looks set to be
a marvelous addition to any amber enthusiasts collection. Watch
this space for more details as and when they become available.
(14 October 1997)
Take a look at Andrew's free insect identification scheme available from this site.
By Linda Wheeler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 26, 1997; Page B05
The Washington Post
Francis M. Hueber is a kind man. He hates to deliver bad news, but, for much of yesterday, he had to tell people what they didn't want to hear: "I'm afraid it's plastic."
Hueber, a research curator in paleobotany at the Smithsonian, met at the National Museum of Natural History with dozens of anxious jewelry owners who wanted his assurance that their grandmothers' necklaces were real amber. The Smithsonian, now hosting an extensive show of amber, offered a free "Amber Identi-day" yesterday and again today, beginning at noon.
At yesterday's 10 a.m. opening, 27 people quickly formed a line, many wearing what they hoped was amber jewelry.
"My mother brought it from Russia 70 years ago," said one of the first in line as she intently watched Hueber examine the necklace under a microscope. Hueber paused. Then he looked up at the woman, smiled apologetically and said, "It's old all right, but it's old plastic."
The woman was stunned. She put the necklace back in a bag and walked briskly away. "It just shows there were hustlers 100 years ago," she said, indicating her grandmother had been swindled. She refused to give her name.
Amber is hardened tree resin and makes unusual jewelry because tiny plants and insects are sometimes preserved in the yellow, orange or red substance. Amber from the Dominican Republic tends to be opaque, but, if found in the Baltic states, it is clear. At the museum gift shop, tiny pieces of carved amber as well as amber jewelry are for sale at prices ranging from $6.50 to $1,700.
According to Hueber, the DuPont chemical company produced a plastic version of amber beginning in the 1890s. "Probably 85 percent of what I see today will be plastic," he said. "It is very hard to tell from the real amber."
Next up was Christine Hickey, who presented Hueber with a three-foot length of small, rough beads, telling him she had bought it in Budapest.
Hueber studied the beads carefully, turning them around in his long fingers and then staring at them through the microscope. "This is definitely amber," he said. "Color-wise it's Baltic."
Hickey, a Washington tour guide who has escorted visitors through the exhibit, said she was delighted with Hueber's confirmation. "When you travel, you never know for sure what you are buying," she said.
Halfway into the two-hour session, Hueber still looked eagerly at each piece of jewelry handed to him. "I am a crow by nature," he said, accepting a pendant from a woman. "I like anything that sparkles."
In this case, the sparkle was internal. He explained to Gloria Smale, of Kensington, that slowly heating a piece of amber will cause the bubbles inside to explode, creating a star-burst look.
"It was heat-treated," Hueber said.
Smale looked dismayed at the suggestion the amber had been altered.
"Think of it as enhanced," he said.
Smale smiled.
Jerry Jacobson, a retired CIA analyst, showed Hueber a necklace of what he thought was red and orange amber.
"It's my wife's grandmother's," he said.
Hueber took a razor and scraped a tiny flake from a red bead.
"What you have here is a mixture," he said, holding up the short necklace as he spoke. "It's mixed amber and plastic. The mix is unusual, but only the orange are real."
"Doesn't surprise me," Jacobson said, chuckling. "Her grandmother was a real mix, too. A real character."
© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company
(20 SEPTEMBER 1997)
TIME Magazine
February 12, 1996 Volume 147, No. 7
MICHAEL D. LEMONICK
The Etruscans prized it as highly as gold. The Greeks mythologized it as the tears of Apollo's daughters, solidified when they cried for their dead brother Phaeton. The Romans considered a single piece worth more than a slave. Cultures stretching from Central America to the Far East, from the Mediterranean to Scandinavia, have used it both as a powerful medicine and as a medium for exquisite jewelry and works of fine art.
Scientists, too, value amber. Trapped within the translucent, usually gold-colored substance are some of the most ancient examples of certain species known to science. The oldest ants, moths, stingless bees, caterpillars, termites, mushrooms and pollen grains, some of them dating back tens of millions of years, have been found in amber. And unlike ordinary fossils, which are relatively crude rock molds of prehistoric life forms, these specimens are often perfectly preserved, with the most delicate features intact.
Now entomologist David Grimaldi of New York City's American Museum of Natural History has announced a find he calls "scientifically the most important of all amber fossils." It's three tiny flowers, probably from an oak tree, that date to the age of the dinosaurs, some 90 million years ago. That makes them the oldest intact flowers ever found in amber, and an important clue to the origin of the flowering plants that now dominate the earth.
Amber's dual roles as artistic medium and scientific research tool have rarely intersected. But that's just what they'll do starting later this week. On Saturday the American Museum will unveil, under Grimaldi's curatorial supervision, the most comprehensive display of amber ever mounted. The exhibition, "Amber: Window to the Past," features 146 fossil specimens and 94 decorative objects from museums and private collections all over the world, including Stone Age amulets from Scandinavia, 18th and 19th century Chinese figurines and treasures once owned by the Medicis of Italy and the Czars of Russia. Many of these artworks have never been publicly shown; none of them have ever been seen in North America. A lavishly illustrated companion text is being published by Abrams ($49.50).
Not bad for a substance that's essentially dried-up tree resin. The viscous stuff that eventually turns into amber comes from a variety of ancient trees, mostly conifers, including pines and extinct relatives of sequoias and cedars, but also some deciduous trees. It probably evolved, says Grimaldi, as a defense against wood-boring insects. "As it dripped down the bark," he explains, "it acted like flypaper and encapsulated them, hermetically sealing the trees' wounds at the same time."
Eventually the trees and their stalactites of dried resin fell, some of them ending up buried in soft sediments at the bottom of still and shallow bodies of water. There, over millions of years, the molecules of resin gradually amalgamated into long, durable chains, creating a material remarkably like plastic: airtight, watertight, chemically inert.
Although wood-boring insects might have been its target, the resin would also trap anything else that happened to stumble into it, including small lizards and frogs. Bad luck for them, but extraordinary good fortune for evolutionary biologists. In one major deposit--a site in New Jersey whose location is closely guarded--Grimaldi and a team of volunteers have found nearly 100 previously unknown ancient species of plants and animals. These and other discoveries around the world have given scientists some important insights into the workings of natural selection--how, for example, insects and flowers helped guide each other's evolution.
Other samples provide dramatic snapshots of prehistoric behavior: mites hitchhiking on the back of sweat bees; a leaf beetle spitting out a stream of noxious bubbles in self-defense; spiders caught in the act of mating; a praying mantis attacked by ants; a spider finishing off a millipede.
As anybody who has seen Jurassic Park knows, plants and animals sealed in amber are a potential source of prehistoric DNA. Scientists have extracted genetic material from, among other things, a 17 million-year-old magnolia leaf, a 30 million-year-old termite and a 120 million-year-old weevil. Yet no serious biologist believes it will ever be possible to clone a dinosaur from a few bits of DNA. Even so excellent a preservative as amber apparently can't keep DNA from breaking down into fragments that may be scientifically interesting but are biologically inert. That's one reason many researchers doubt the claims of California scientists who announced last year that they had managed to revive bacteria preserved in amber for 25 million years.
For scientists, a piece of amber with nothing trapped inside is not so exciting. For artists and their patrons, however, it is an uncut gem. According to Grimaldi, Stone Age artisans used amber found on beaches of the Baltic Sea 10,000 years ago to carve amulets, pendants and tiny figurines. Indeed, Baltic deposits were Western civilization's primary source of amber at least as far back as 1200 B.C.
The name notwithstanding, amber isn't always amber in color. It can also be milky white, red and even blue or green--more than 250 different shades in all, say researchers--and artists have used just about every one of them.
Because it sometimes contains dead animals, amber was strongly associated with death in ancient times. "It was believed to serve as a ray of light for the dead person in the afterlife," says Faya Causey, a historian of ancient art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Many of the amber figurines carved during the classical period relate either to death or to fertility and rejuvenation. Amber may have been used by Egyptians in the mummification process, possibly because it is a powerful desiccant, or drying agent. It was also valued as a medicine. According to Pliny the Elder, Roman peasants used it to cure diseases of the neck and head. In the New World, the Maya burned it as incense to treat a variety of ailments.
By the time of the Renaissance, the Western world had largely abandoned the mystical and medicinal uses of amber. But the great amber deposits of the Baltic still had plenty of business: guilds of craftsmen produced an enormous variety of secular objects, from jewelry to furniture. Under the patronage of aristocrats, amber carving reached its height in Prussia in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, culminating in the mystery-shrouded Amber Room (see box).
The romance isn't over yet. Amber jewelry is still being produced in prodigious quantities, and thanks to Jurassic Park, there is a new market in bug- and animal-bearing amber as well. The growing demand for such items has run up prices for larger specimens to thousands of dollars--creating a secondary, shadow market for amber forgeries. Careless consumers may find themselves owning very expensive chunks of yellow plastic. But buyers who deal with reputable specialty catalogs and museum stores can, for a modest price, experience firsthand the beauty and mystique of these golden treasures from the ancient past.
--Reported by Andrea Dorfman/New York
THANKS TO ADOLF HITLER, THE MOST ELABORATE AND arguably the most glorious work of amber art ever created disappeared in 1941. It was at the height of World War II that invading Nazis dismantled the fabled Amber Room of Czar Peter the Great and carted the whole thing off.
Perhaps they thought they were entitled. The room was commissioned by Frederick I of Prussia in 1701 for his lavish palace in Berlin. It took Europe's finest craftsmen eight years to complete the dozen 16-ft.-high mosaic panels, comprising nearly 100,000 perfectly fitted pieces of carved amber depicting flowers and Prussian royal emblems.
But Frederick's son Frederick William I had no use for such frills, so in 1716 he gave the panels to Peter the Great. In 1755 they were assembled in the freshly completed Ekaterininsky Palace, near St. Petersburg, and supplemented with trompe l'oeil amber wallpaper and amber objects from Peter's collection. In the rays of the setting sun, according to contemporary accounts, the whole room seemed to glow.
It must have looked good to the invading Nazis, who shipped the room--six tons' worth of paneling valued at more than $150 million--to Konigsberg (modern Kaliningrad). What happened to the panels is a mystery. They may have been deliberately burned, or inadvertently bombed in an Allied raid, or even--a theory that Boris Yeltsin reportedly favors--preserved to this day in a private German collection. "There are an enormous number of legends," says Alexander Shedrinsky, an art-conservation expert at New York University, "but I think the most realistic suggestion is that they disappeared during the bombing."
That doesn't mean, however, that the Amber Room is lost forever. Since 1979, Russian craftsmen have been painstakingly trying to re-create it--using as their guide a single color photograph, some drawings and notes, and bits of amber that fell off the original walls. The project is expected to cost millions of dollars and take at least five more years. "What they have done so far is absolutely mind-boggling," says Shedrinsky.
Visitors to the amber exhibition at the American Museum of
Natural History will get a chance to judge for themselves: on
display will be a corner table and surrounding wainscoting--which
seem illuminated from within in warm tones ranging from pale
yellow to coppery red. Master amber craftsmen from Russia will be
on hand to demonstrate their techniques and to prove that not
every instance of Nazi desecration is irreversible.
(20 SEPTEMBER 1997)
A new geological site for amber has been identified on the
South coast of England. This particular site is very interesting
due to the age of the amber; it is older than the Lebanese
source, i.e. 125+ millions year. Small pieces have only so far
been retrieved but the level of preservation is remarkable and
may well lead to to the discovery of the oldest insects in amber
so far found.
(9 September 1997)