Scientific beauty — Ken Anderson, professor of geology at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, holds a piece of amber in his office at SIUC. Anderson’s recent discovery of the oldest amber on record, and its implications for the understanding of the evolution of plants, are featured in an article in the journal “Science,” released today (Oct. 2). (Photo by Tim Crosby)
“….amber found in a coal seam in southern Illinois appears to confound categories. It has a chemical makeup similar to amber from angiosperms, but it dates from about 200 million years before the flowering plants evolved. The amber, in droplets barely a quarter of an inch in diameter, was analyzed by Ken B. Anderson of Southern Illinois University and P. Sargent Bray, now at Macquarie University in Australia, and described in Science….”
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