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 article discusses the seamier side of collection, unsafe mines, devastated rain forest, and ethic insurgency.
Some 99 million years before this spring market and about 220 kilometers away in what is now Myanmar, a balmy seaside forest echoed with the calls of strange creatures. The trees bled massive quantities of resin when insects attacked them or storms broke off limbs. The resin puddled and pooled, miring countless creatures "like a mini–La Brea Tar Pits," says paleontologist Ryan McKellar at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Regina, Canada. Over time, the resin's frankincenselike gases evaporated; its molecules linked into polymers and hardened into what we now call amber.
Amber excels at preserving fine detail and soft tissue, says Victoria McCoy, a paleontologist at the University of Bonn in Germany. On contact, resin seeps into tissues, protecting the entombed animals and plants from fungus and rot while also drying them out. Later, the resin hardens to form a shell that further protects the fossil inclusions. In the best cases, "cellular- or even subcellular-level details are still preserved," she says.
Amber from other major deposits—specimens that wash up on beaches in Baltic countries or are mined in the Dominican Republic—is far younger. It also rarely traps strong, active creatures, such as dragonflies, or any vertebrates beyond a few lizards.
