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To understand how and why color is preserved in some amber fossils but not in others, and whether the colors seen in fossils are the same as the ones insects paraded more than 99 million years ago, the researchers used a diamond knife blades to cut through the exoskeleton of two of the colorful amber wasps and a sample of normal dull cuticle. Using electron microscopy, they were able to show that colorful amber fossils have a well-preserved exoskeleton nanostructure that scatters light. The unaltered nanostructure of colored insects suggested that the colors preserved in amber may be the same...

An international team of paleontologists has found a piece of amber containing the beautifully preserved ammonite, several marine and land organisms that lived 99 million years ago (Cretaceous period).The 99-million-year-old piece of amber from northern Myanmar. Image credit: Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology.

Prehistoric Iberians created "imitation amber" by repeatedly coating bead cores with tree resins... Many studies have confirmed the ornamental and symbolic importance of amber to European prehistoric peoples. This study is the first to discuss potential prehistoric Iberian "imitation amber" beads made using the application of repeated resinite coatings on top of a bead core. The authors obtained beads from two prehistoric sites in Spain: two from a cave tomb at the La Molina site in Sevilla, dating from the 3rd millennium BC, and four from a burial site in Cova del Gegant near Barcelona, dating from the 2nd millennium...

The rare fossils are helping scientists understand how ancient bugs hatched from their eggs The insects became trapped in the sticky resin 130million years ago, shortly after bursting through the shell – and scientists aren't sure how the creatures met their grisly fate. The amazing fossils are helping researchers understand how ancient bugs hatched and took their first steps in the ancient world. Like many modern animals, the insects used a tool known as an egg-burster to smash through the egg shell. "The structures that make hatching possible tend to disappear quickly once egg-laying animals hatch, so obtaining fossil evidence...

One hundred million years ago, the sky was filled with birds unlike those seen today, many with long, streamerlike tail feathers. Now, paleontologists have found examples of these paired feathers preserved in exquisite detail in 31 pieces of Cretaceous amber from Myanmar. The rare 3D preservation reveals the feathers’ structure is completely different from that of modern feathers—and hints that they may have been defensive decoys to foil predators. Such tail streamers—in some cases longer than the bodies—have been observed in early bird fossils from China for several decades, in particular, the 125-million-year-old Confuciusornis sanctus. They may also be present...

A 99-million-year-old beetle has been found, trapped in amber, stunning scientists. The new beetle, known as Propiestus archaicus, was found in Hukawng Valley in the northern part Myanmar, near China's southern border. P. archaicus is a distant relative of today's rove beetles, found in South America and the southern part of Arizona, revealing that the continents shifted rapidly millions of years ago to what we now see today. "This is a very rare find," Shuhei Yamamoto said, a Field Museum researcher and lead author of a paper in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, said in a statement. Thanks to the...

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Amber and other unusual materials such as jade, obsidian and rock crystal have attracted interest as raw materials for the manufacture of decorative items since Late Prehistory and, indeed, amber retains a high value in present-day jewellery. 'Baltic' amber from Scandinavia is often cited as a key material circulating in prehistoric Europe, but in a new study published today in PLOS ONE researchers have found that amber from Sicily was travelling around the Western Mediterranean as early as the 4th Millennium BC - at least 2,000 years before the arrival of any Baltic amber in Iberia... "Interestingly, the first amber...

The newly-reported specimen was obtained from an amber deposit in the Angbamo area in Myanmar’s Kachin province.The fossil is a 1.6-inch (4.75 cm) long postcranial skeleton made up of 97 vertebrae; the snake’s head is missing. It dates from the Late Cretaceous epoch, approximately 99 million years ago.“This snake, named Xiaophis myanmarensis, is linked to ancient snakes from Argentina, Africa, India and Australia,” said University of Alberta’s Professor Michael Caldwell.“It is an important — and until now, missing — component of understanding snake evolution from southern continents, that is Gondwana, in the mid-Mesozoic.” “At 99 million years old, it dates...

At first glance, the oddly shaped splotches darkening a vibrant yellow piece of amber appear to be amorphous blobs. But upon closer examination, a shape emerges. There are two forelimbs. At the end of each limb are four smaller bones, forming a distinctly handlike shape. Within the largest dark spot, which has a rounded top, eye sockets become distinguishable. It’s a skull. Encased within the smooth chunk of amber is the body of a tiny young tropical frog. Scientists say the diminutive critter, measuring less than an inch long, lived about 99 million years ago before it became entombed in...

The damage from the actions of citizens of PRC in Primorye amounted to more than 50 million rubles. They face a lengthy imprisonment if convicted. Citizens of China are jailed before trial in Primorye for attempting to illegally export a large batch of wild animal parts, including the endangered Amur tiger, as well as firearms, ammunition and amber to the PRC, PRIMPRESS reports citing the press service of the Amur Tiger Protection Center. According to the experts, the main part of the contraband are the derivatives of at least five individuals of the Amur tiger (clad skins, 18 claws, bones...

The Cretaceous arachnid Chimerarachne yingi was found trapped in amber after 100 million years. Credit: University of Kansas ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ An extraordinary new species of arachnid, resembling a spider with a tail, has been discovered in amber from Myanmar (formerly Burma), of mid-Cretaceous age, around 100 million years ago. The finding is described in a paper appearing Monday in Nature Ecology & Evolution by an international team including Paul Selden of the Paleontological Institute and Department of Geology at the University of Kansas and colleagues from China, Germany, Virginia and the United Kingdom. "There's been a lot of amber being produced...

Paleontologists have found entombed in amber a 99-million-year-old tick grasping the feather of a dinosaur, providing the first direct evidence that the tiny pests drank dinosaur blood. Immortalized in the golden gemstone, the bloodsucker’s last supper is remarkable because it is rare to find parasites with their hosts in the fossil record. The finding, which was published Tuesday, gives researchers tantalizing insight into the prehistoric diet of one of today’s most prevalent pests.

Tiny fossils preserved in Cretaceous resin include one parasite that was engorged when it died. Blood-filled parasites trapped in amber have been igniting imaginations since the 1990s, when the resurrected dinosaurs of Jurassic Park burst out of Michael Crichton’s novels and onto the big screen. Now, scientists say they have found the real deal: chunks of Burmese amber carrying ticks that drank the blood of feathered dinosaurs some 99 million years ago. One of these parasites is tangled up in a possible dinosaur feather found encased in a lump of amber. Another was found in a separate piece of amber...

A trio of aging sleuths - homeopath Leonhard Blume, 73, scientist Günter Eckardt, 67, and georadar specialist Peter Lohr, 71 - are convinced the missing Amber Room of the Russian Tsars lies in the Prince's Cave in the Hartenstein hills near Dresden. Third Reich scientists used the cave complex during the war - but all records of what went on there have mysteriously vanished from local archives. Lohr used radar imaging to detect underground booby traps and what appear to be bunkers under the soil.  He scanned the hill in September after claiming that a 'reliable source' told him of...

There is perhaps no lost-treasure mystery more seductive than that of the priceless Amber Room of Peter the Great, which disappeared in the chaotic closing hours of World War II. Now Bartlomiej Plebanczyk, an unassuming historian and museum director in northeastern Poland, believes he has found it. Elderly villagers told Mr. Plebanczyk that they had seen a German convoy unloading big crates into a secret chamber in a stark, moss-covered Nazi bunker near the Russian border in early 1945. So the Mamerki Museum, whichhe leads, recently completed a ground-penetrating radar scan of the derelict bunker that he said confirmed the...

The vast majority of Cretaceous ants belong to stem-group Formicidae and comprise workers and reproductives of largely generalized morphologies... recent discoveries from the Cretaceous suggest relatively advanced social levels. Remarkable exceptions to this pattern of generalized morphologies are ants with bizarre mouthparts in which both female castes have modified heads and bladelike mandibles that uniquely move in a horizontal rather than vertical plane... with the mandibles apparently acting as traps triggered by sensory hairs in a way distinct from that of modern trap-jaw ants... some of the most effective predatory ants are solitary hunters with powerful trap jaws... Dr. WANG...

Bronze tools found in Sweden dating from 3,600 years ago were made using copper from the Mediterranean, archaeologists have shown. They now also believe that rock carvings of ships found in Bohuslan, Sweden were visual documentation of trade between ancient Scandinavia and the Mediterranean. Most of the copper circulating in Bronze Age Europe apparently originated from Sicily, Sardinia, the Iberian peninsula - and Cyprus, going by isotope analysis... The precious copper was exchanged for Nordic amber, which was as cherished as gold in Mycenaean Greece and in the prehistoric Middle East... The ancient Cypriot copper industry produced relatively pure stuff,...

Researchers today announced in the journal Nature Plants the discovery of the first-ever fossil specimens of an "asterid" - a family of flowering plants that gave us everything from the potato to tomatoes, tobacco, petunias and our morning cup of coffee. But these two 20-30 million-year-old fossil flowers, found perfectly preserved in a piece of amber, came from the dark side of the asterid family - they belong to the genus Strychnos, which ultimately gave rise to some of the world's most famous poisons, including strychnine and curare. Poisons that would later find their way into blow-gun weapons, rat control,...

...The analyses revealed that the glass originate from the same glass workshops in Egypt that supplied the glass that the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun took with him to his grave in 1323 BC... Globalisation in the Bronze Age Twenty-three glass beads from Denmark were analysed using plasma-spectrometry. Without destroying the fragile beads, this technique makes it possible to compare the chemical composition of trace elements in the beads with reference material from Amarna in Egypt and Nippur in Mesopotamia, about 50 km south east of Baghdad in Iraq. The comparison showed that the chemical composition of the two sets of trace...