Amber: Just what is it anyway?

To begin with, I am an anthropology major. How did an anthropologist become interested in amber? I took a class at the University of Kentucky in physical geology. Dr. Henry Berry (Spike) was my first inspiration and I became more interested in the history behind the rock layers. From this came an interest in ancient life forms like dinosaurs, trilobites, creatures in Burgess Shale, well you get the drift. Something so perfectly preserved as a 90 million year old Lebanese weevil totally blew me away. First, I read Dr. George Poinar's book, The Quest for Life in Amber. The adventures of Dr. Poinar got me enthused about my upcoming historical geology class, taught by my friend and Head Web Dog Daddy,Dr. Paul Howell. Paul seemed to think the paleontology angle would be cool for the Dogs and the Amber page was born. Since its inception, I have learned many things: I don't click the mouse fast enough, I can make HTML pages, and Tootsie Rolls are addictive. Poinar's book sparked my interest for more and after seeing an episode on amber on Paleoworld (TLC on cable) I discovered Dr. David Grimaldi and his book, Amber: A Window to the Past. Both books are extraordinary and a must read for persons interested in the subject. You will find though, both men differ in how they approach research and use of amber specimens in that research. Ethics can be subjective, and both researchers state their case well. Go to the links and discover more about this mysterious substance.

Resin, Resin Everywhere........

Amber comes from resin formed by various conifer trees. Resins contain aromatic chemicals called terpenes which make them volatile, or flammable. Burning amber or copal as incense has been done for thousands of years. Volatiles evaporate into the air from conifers in the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee producing the smokey haze that gives the mountains their name. Resins have antibiotic properties that protect trees by fighting infections caused by losing a branch or an invasive parasite like the beetle. For humans, resins have possible medicinal properties:

has been used ground up in tea as a stimulant

used the same way as a diuretic

to kill intestinal parasites

Native Americans used resins from cedars, firs and pines to make teas and aromatic, piney smelling incense. Ancient Maya burned amber chips in their temples as offerings and made lip plugs inserted in slits in the lower lip as adornments and symbols of bravery in battle. Treatises written claimed amber concoctions could cure smallpox, ulcers, diarrhea, and "the foulest distempers", meaning syphylis.

Two resin products with fame of "biblical" proportions are frankincense and myrrh, two of the Magi gifts to the Christ child. Frankincense comes from 3 species of Boswellia: carteril, papyrifera, and thurifera. The finest known is Arabian and was formerly transported by camel caravans thru Palestine and Egypt, all the way to Greece and then Rome. Around 200 A.D., merchants were shipping over 3,000 tons per year, most of this headed for Rome.

Myrrh comes from Commifera trees and has been used as perfume base, oils for Hebrew annointing rituals, and for incense in cremations. As an embalming agent, ancient Egyptians poured the concoction of resins, gums and oils into the cranial, chest, abdominal, and pelvic cavities of bodies to be mummified. Resin has a dehydrating as well as preservative property. Bandages were soaked in it to wrap the bodies. Apparantly this has worked, as evidenced by the condition of bodies found after many thousands of years. Egyptians also derived sandrac and mastic from resins, two chemicals used in paint pigments for ceramic jars and art on the walls of tombs. Artisans used resin to harden oil paints and coat their paintings with a protective cover of liquid dammar (generic Malay word for all resin, but generally refers to Southeast Asia). For more detail and wonderful photographs, check out either Dr. Poinar's or Dr. Grimaldi's work. There's more information those two books than I can fit on any web page!

Copal:How is it different from amber?

Anything clear and golden is not necessarily true amber. Copal is also a resin product, however the maximum age is usually less than a million years. Some East African copal from Zanzibar may possibly be 2 million years old, but testing so far has not confirmed this. Sub-fossil resin or copal is usually only thousands of years old. Oldest confirmed is the Mizunami deposit in Japan at 33,000 years old (Holocene epoch). Copal and amber share many characteristics, but there are ways to tell them apart:

If you put a drop of alcohol or other solvent on the surface of copal, it becomes tacky, while amber does not.

Copal melts and liquifies when close to a flame, while amber will soften and blacken on the surface, but will not melt.

Amber and copal can both be polished to a high shine, but after exposure to air over time, the surface of copal will become deeply "crazed" or take on the appearance of a dry river bed. Amber also crazes, but not to the same extent.

Both have a low specific gravity (they are both light) and will float in salt water. This technique can be used on smaller pieces of both resin products to tell if you have been duped into buying yellow plastic.

Amber and copal run a range of colors from light yellows to orange and deep reds. Texture is much the same and both can have all sorts of inclusions. Copal contains high amounts of volatile terpenes from the original resin and when exposed to air gives the crazed appearance. Amber, being older, contains much less. Major deposits of the sub-fossil resin (also called resinite) come from tropical legume trees and auricarians (a genus of tree found in South America and Australia). A wound or scar on a tree will bleed resin which hardens rapidly to seal off the wound, much like scar tissue that forms on our skin. Our blood has antibodies that fight off germs that invade an open wound and so do these trees in a sense. Antibiotic and medicinal properties of the resins keep the tree from being "infected" by invading insects or organisms.

New Zealand, just south of the Australian continent has a species of tree analogous to our giant sequoia in size, called the kauri gum (Agathis australis or Dammara australis). Kauri gums don't look like conifers we see in the Americas. Where most have pine needle, the kauri have broad, thick leaves similar to those of the acacia. Pine cones give them away as true conifers. Massive globs of gum resin ooze from open wounds in the outer bark and fall to the ground, entombing ground dwelling plants and organisms. Buried deposits of fossil gum have been found where these forests once stood. Gum deposits in the past would be mined and used in commercial production of varnishes. Most varnish now comes from synthetic resins.

Copal is mined in small pieces or very large chunks weighing over 100 pounds. Like amber, the Hymenaea tree is also a major source. Pieces are found containing twigs, leaves, small branches, forest floor plants like ferns and mosses as well as many kinds of 4 to 8 legged creatures. After seeing the physical similarities, it is easy to see how the untrained eye could be fooled and not recognize the difference between amber with inclusions and copal with inclusions. A rip-off artist can easily create forgeries with copal and pass them off as true amber. Unless you know a few basics about the substance, you could purchase a fake by mistake.

Ancient Amber is found everywhere...

Where in the world can you find amber deposits? What about different ages?

Amber comes in different age groups. The oldest deposit discovered to date was found in 260 million year old Permian limestone in the Ural Mountains near the Chekarda River. Triassic amber from the Mesozoic Era tends to have a dark red hue and ranges from 245 to 208 million years old. Tertiary amber comes from the Cenozoic Era and is much younger at 66-1.6 million years old. In the U.S., Mesozoic amber can be found along the eastern coast, through the Tennessee and Alabama areas and in a curved line from there up to Grassy Lake in Alberta, Canada. The accompanying maps illustrate sites across the globe for finding amber.

Tertiary Age Amber from 66 million to 1.6 million years old

Mesozoic Amber from 245 million to 66 million years old

Think about the stages of earth's development when the different age ambers were being deposited and fossilized. At what stages of formation were the continents? Where were the oceans at the time? How many and what types of dinosaurs probably fed on or rested under the shade of these particular trees? Check out the Webdogs timeline for some insight and answers.

All information on this page courtesy of Dr. George Poinar, Oregon State University, and Dr. David Grimaldi, American Museum of Natural History, and Microsoft Encarta Reference Library.

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