Oh, the fantastic things you find in Zanzibar! Off the coast of Tanzania, we find a wonderful place with a substance that is almost amber, called copal. Copal is a few million years younger than true amber, but the untrained eye has a hard time telling the difference. This particular chunk comes from the Hymenaea verrucosa tree. The heartwood is small inside the thick resin covering. Inside the heartwood are beetle galleries, or holes, full of resin. True size of this specimen is about 4.8 inches. The American Museum of Natural History owns this piece.
Photo courtesy of Dr. David Grimaldi, American Museum of Natural History.
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