Tag: amber
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PBS Eons: That Time the Earth Was Sticky
PBS Eons has a new episode. This is about Cretaceous amber… what it is, how it forms, and what is found in it. The Cretaceous Resinous Interval, a 54-million year period where amber was preserved in hundreds of locations across the world, was a gooey, gummy point in Earth’s history – and then amber suddenly…
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2025 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show – Preview #10: Large Beetle in Amber
This is the preview post #10 for the 2025 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show Live Auction. The ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show for 2025 will be held on March 15th and 16th at the DuPage Fairgrounds in Wheaton, IL, which is the same location as last year. All details can be found here.…
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Courtship cut short for termites trapped in 38 million-year-old amber fossil
LiveScience has a story about insect fossils in amber. Discovered in a Russian mine, two mating termites in amber preserves behavior that is rarely seen in the fossil record. The amber dates to the Eocene about 38 million years ago. The fossil was purchased by A Czech scientist in an online fossil shop. The specimen…
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110-Million-Year-Old Lizard Found in Burmese Amber
General view of Retinosaurus hkamtiensis: (a) photograph of the specimen — a well-preserved skull, including the mandible, part of the hyoid (ceratobranchial), and a partial postcranial skeleton, as well as well-preserved skin tissues — within the amber resin in dorsal view; (b-d) high resolution computerized scan (HRCT) rendering of the integument surface; note that the integument…
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Nature: Ancient Pine Cone Trapped in Amber Shows a Super-Rare Form of Plant ‘Parenting’
Nature ScienceAlert has a story about a pine cone preserved in amber. The fossil, which dates to about 40 million years ago during the Eocene, shows a rare form of parental care in plants. The seeds in the pine cone can be seen to be germinating and sprouting greenery before the cone has fallen to…
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ESCONI October 2021 General Meeting – October 8th, 2021 at 8:00 PM via Zoom – “Hell Creek Amber: Paleontology’s New Frontier in the Western Interior”
The speaker at our October 8, 2021 meeting via Zoom will be Stew Cook, Paleo Prep Lab Manager at the Carter County Museum in Ekalaka Montana. Carter County is where Burpee Museum has excavated since 2001, and the source of “Jane” and “Homer”. The topic of his talk will be amber from the Hell Creek…
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SciNews: 99-Million-Year-Old Fossil Flower Found Encased in Burmese Amber
SciNews has a story about a flower preserved in amber. The fossil flower is called Valviloculus pleristaminis. It lived about 99 miliion years ago during the Cretaceous Period in what is now Myanmar. Myanmar has amber deposits that have yielded some amazing finds, including dinosaur tails, feathers, wings, and even a skull. The discovery is…
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99-Million-Year-Old ‘Hell Ant’ Attack Captured in Amber
SciNews has a story about an interesting ant found in amber. Found in Burma, the “hell ant” (Ceratomyrmex ellenbergeri) lived during the Cretaceious Period about 78 million years ago. The “hell ants” due to their horn-like appendages on their head. Details can be found in a paper in the journal Current Biology. “Fossilized behavior is exceedingly…
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100 million years in amber: Researchers discover oldest fossilized slime mold
100 million-year-old amber piece with lizard leg and mycomycete (arrow). Credit: Alexander Schmidt, University of Göttingen and Scientific Reports Phys.org has a story about some very old slime. Many fossils have been found amber, including dinosaur tail feathers a few years ago. This time it’s some very old fungi. In this case, a mycomycete and it’s…
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LiveScience: The 100 Best Science Photos of 2019
Live Science has an interesting post, which includes 100 awesome science photos from 2019. Check it out… a great way to relax on New Years Day! Happy New Year from us at ESCONI! About 99 million years ago, a Cretaceous millipede scampered over the forest floor in what is now Southeast Asia, avoiding being squished…
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‘Remarkable’ fossil features an insect trapped in amber, stuck to a dinosaur jaw
Science has a post about a special fossil insect. The ‘remarkable’ fossil consists of sap-sucking aphids trapped in amber and stuck to the jawbone of a duck-billed dinosaur. It was discovered in 2010 in Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada. All the detail are in a paper publish in the journal Science. The “remarkable” two-for-one…
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ScienceMag: Fossils in Burmese amber offer an exquisite view of dinosaur times—and an ethical minefield
Science Magazine has an interesting piece about the troubled nature of Burmese amber. Dating to about 99 million years ago, Burmese amber has revealed almost unbelievable fossils, from bird wings, to whole lizards, a host of insects, even a feathered dinosaur tail! Over 1000 new species have been described in recent years. Additionally, the…
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NatGeo: This ancient sea creature fossilized in tree resin. How’d that happen?
National Geographic has an article about an ammonite in amber. The amber is from Myanmar and is 99 million years old. The study was published Monday in the journal PNAS by a group led by Chinese paleontologist Tingting Tu. As you might guess, it’s the first known record of an ammonite found in amber. In…
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Spider-like Creature With a Scorpion’s Tail Found Trapped in Amber
The NY Times has an article about an exciting new spider-like fossil discovered in amber. Chimerarchne yingi lived during the Cretaceous Period more than 100 million years ago in what is now Southeast Asia. It’s spider-like, because it’s not quite a spider. It have 8 legs, fangs, and a whip like tail. It was only…
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National Geographic: Ticks That Fed on Dinosaurs Found Trapped in Amber
National Geographic has a story straight out of Jurassic Park. The story is about the recent discovery of blood-filled ticks trapped in Burmese amber. The amber dates to the Cretaceous period, about 99 million years old. This places the fossil firmly into the age of dinosaurs and implies that these ticks probably feed on feathered…
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Spider Kills Wasp a 100 Million Years Ago
From Sci-News: (hat tip via Dave at ESCONI Yahoo Group) This piece of amber preserved the event in remarkable detail, an action that took place some 100 million years ago in the Hukawng Valley of Myanmar. The fossil also contains the body of a male spider in the same web. This provides the oldest evidence of…
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Oldest-ever bugs found preserved in amber
From Discover Magazine: (hat tip Floyd) Three tiny creatures from the Triassic period are the oldest ever to be discovered preserved in amber – about 100 million years older than any other amber arthropod ever collected…. … But even though arthropods are more than 400 million years old, until now the oldest record of the…
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Preserved Dino Feathers found in Amber
From Science via NatureNews: The amber samples are between 70 and 85 million years old, and come from a site called Grassy Lake in western Canada that was once home to a conifer forest. The site is well known for the wide range of insects found preserved in its amber. Palaeontologist Ryan McKellar and his…
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Amber Yields Clues to the History of Oxygen in Earth’s Atmosphere
Via geology.com: Gas bubbles trapped in amber show an oxygen-rich Cretaceous atmosphere Republished from an information release posted by USGS in June, 2009. In addition: amber in India’s Cambay area has new information too.
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Researcher uncovers oldest amber ever recorded: The Mystery of Illinois Amber
Via NYTimes: Hat tip: Mark White
