By: GeneCooper
Image: Gene Cooper, GIGAmacro ⧉
Subject: IKON Mining & Exploration
License: Copyright, All Rights Reserved

Uploaded: 31 Oct 2017
Last Updated: 31 Oct 2017

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Amber is fossilized tree resin, which has been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times. Valued from antiquity to the present as a gemstone, amber is made into a variety of decorative objects and jewelry. There are five classes of amber, defined on the basis of their chemical constituents. Because it originates as a soft, sticky tree resin, amber sometimes contains animal and plant material as inclusions. Amber occurring in coal seams is also called resinite, and the term ambrite is applied to that found specifically within New Zealand coal seams. Amber is a unique preservational mode, preserving otherwise unfossilizable parts of organisms; as such it is helpful in the reconstruction of ecosystems as well as organisms; the chemical composition of the resin, however, is of limited utility in reconstructing the phylogenetic affinity of the resin producer. Amber sometimes contains animals or plant matter that became caught in the resin as it was secreted. Insects, spiders and even their webs, annelids, frogs, crustaceans, bacteria and amoebae, marine microfossils, wood, flowers and fruit, hair, feathers and other small organisms have been recovered in Cretaceous ambers (deposited c. 130 million years ago). The oldest amber to bear fossils (mites) is from the Carnian (Triassic, 230 million years ago) of north-eastern Italy. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber