Insects and animals in amber

Amber is the fossilized resin of ancient trees. It is not so rare in the world. For millions of years, the resin, resistant to external forces, along with the trunks, was often carried away by water flows and overlapped with layers of loose rocks. In this case, wood, as a rule, collapsed, but very unusual transformations took place with resin - it acquired the properties of a stone. Sometimes layers containing fossilized resin - amber, appear again on the surface, as, for example, happened on the coast of the Baltic Sea, and then this witness of bygone eras can become accessible to people.

Of particular interest to jewelers and scientists studying the development of life are stones with inclusions: animals that once fell into a trap, insects, spiders and other small creatures adhered to the flowing resin. They were unable to free themselves, the resin gradually absorbed them, as if preserving them.

Amber is an unusual ornamental stone. If the crystallization of most rocks is a geochemical process that takes place in the depths of the planet, as a rule, at the highest temperatures and colossal pressure, then amber in its formation takes a completely different path. And it begins not in the depths, but quite the opposite.

A wound received by a tree, for example, from a lightning strike, in a strong wind or from the fall of another tree, is healed by the resin flowing from the vessels. The resin tightens the damage, preventing the penetration of parasites, the coverings are gradually restored under its layer and the tree continues to grow. At the same time, the shiny, almost transparent viscous mass attracts various small inhabitants of the forest, and they, hoping to profit, rush to the damaged tree.

While the tree is growing, resin remains on its trunk in cracks and chips, filling them. It may also be inside the trunk, if a young tree has undergone damage, gradually such an area will appear under layers of overgrown wood and bark. When a tree inevitably dies, its trunk, having fallen, will begin to decompose, but the resin that has changed its structure can persist for millions of years, hiding prehistoric inclusions inside itself.

Pieces of amber with inclusions that were once considered a game of nature, peculiar coincidences with the appearance of insects or other small creatures have always been especially appreciated. The price of such unique pieces of amber can reach tens of thousands of dollars. This is perhaps the only ornamental stone, the price of which increases due to inclusions.

Samples of amber from various deposits often differ significantly in their physical properties: shade of color, hardness, fragility. The reason for the differences may be origin - belonging to different biological species of trees, different ages, chemical composition of the host rocks, depth of occurrence, and much more.

The formation of biological inclusions is not a rare process; it also occurs in our time. The escaping resin is a substance attractive to many insects. However, after touching it, not everyone manages to free themselves. If the resin continues to flow, the accidentally trapped creature will gradually find itself under a layer of this viscous liquid. Such inclusions were named by the Latin term "inclusive" (inclusion). Moisture gradually evaporates from the resin that has flowed out onto the surface of the trunk, it becomes solid and often grows into the trunk, like a foreign body, having completed its task, protecting the damaged body from external harmful influences.

The animals that have already died in it remain, as they should, in their place, inside the formed accumulation of resin. Having passed its considerable life path, a tree, like any living creature, sooner or later dies, its wood most often decays, but the hardened resin that is not subject to this process becomes the property of the earth's crust, like an ordinary stone. It is carried in loose rocks, it is influenced by streams of water, it is thrown together with pebbles by the sea surf. This is how a stone of varying roundness is formed - amber.

Amber keeps within itself everything that, in one way or another, got into it over hundreds of millions of years. Modern researchers use pieces of amber to restore the composition of the air of bygone eras, because, in addition to biological inclusions, amber often contains air bubbles... It is not at all difficult to spot them in processed amber.

Of course, insects are most often found in inclusions. Since its appearance on Earth about 150 million years ago, this group of invertebrates has firmly taken the lead in the number of species and diversity of forms. Thus, insects in amber are a natural, one might even say, inevitable phenomenon caused by long coexistence of insects and plants. The diversity of insects in ancient times was precisely confirmed by the frequency of their presence inside pieces of amber, a fossil resin.

However, amber inclusions are not limited to representatives of this always large group. Somewhat less often, other animals also became victims of resin: spiders, scorpions, wood lice.The predators probably sought to try their luck near the drop of resin attractive to insects - in the end, they themselves were caught along with their victims. And woodlice, most likely, became prisoners of amber due to their slowness. If the resin leaked out quickly, then they just got in its way.

Another thing is the rare finds of more complex creatures. So, in one of the pieces of amber, a small lizard was identified that lived in the forest about 55 million years ago. How did she become a victim of tar? Most likely, she also hunted and approached her in an attempt to watch the insects hovering around. The further development of the plot is not difficult to imagine.

The lizard could use a favorite technique of most of its modern relatives - a sharp dash at an unsuspecting victim. Whether her hunt succeeded is not important now. The result is a unique amber with a small ancient lizard inside.

Research into the contents of amber began in the 18th century. They began to study him under a microscope and found out that inside, there are really inclusions - inclusions of foreign bodies, and not at all a play of nature, as was previously thought. The study of inclusions has even become one of the areas of paleontology - a science that studies the remains of the ancient inhabitants of the Earth.

At present, thanks to amber, thousands of species of extinct creatures have been described, which otherwise would never have become the property of science. The similarity of the ancient inhabitants with their modern relatives is striking. Already in the Mesozoic, all modern groups of insects lived on Earth, and spiders did not differ from modern ones. And the scorpions were exactly the same.

Much less common are truly unique findings that make it possible to more fully reconstruct the course of evolution of individual groups of organisms. Of course, not all of them and far from immediately end up in scientific laboratories, since it is the uniqueness of individual stones with inclusions that makes them the most valuable not only for science, but also at organized auctions.

In Baltic amber, most often there are inclusions containing flying insects, such as mosquito, biting midge, fly, and various types of beetles. This allows us to draw a conclusion about the past of the region. Most likely, evergreen forests with numerous fresh water bodies once grew here. This confirms the presence of various ants - and in our time, typical forest insects.

However, sometimes real unique ones are found in amber. In Burma, a piece of amber was found with the remains of a long and thin tail covered with feathers. Extensive examination of the specimen has confirmed the suggestion that it is the tail of a Cretaceous dinosaur.

No less striking was the discovery of unusual arthropods, initially mistaken for some kind of scorpions. After detailed research, the group of arachnids was named tailed spiders. The purpose of the articulated outgrowth of the abdomen of these creatures is not yet completely clear.

And the find inside amber - the product of ancient trees - a small fish or shells of mollusks is completely inexplicable.

Amber helped to learn a lot about the ancient eras of our planet, however, and at the same time he himself asked a still unsolved riddle. During the entire time of its study, everything has been found in pieces of this unusual rock - from microorganisms and microscopic pollen to feathers of birds and reptile scales, however, no needles have yet been found, or at least fragments of the needles of those mysterious trees that gave rise to streams of resin which has become amber over millions of years.

How animals get into amber, see below.