Amber, Resinite, and Fossil Resins

Amber, Resinite, and Fossil Resins
Author: Ken B. Anderson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 334
Release: 1995
Genre: Nature
ISBN:

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Reports the state of the art in chemical studies of ambers, including structural characterization, isotopic composition, maturation studies, resinite derived oils, and amino acid distributions. Discusses aspects of the biological, geological, petrology, and technology of fossil resins. Presents a diverse summary of the current knowledge of the nature and properties of fossil resins.

Ancient Carved Ambers in the J. Paul Getty Museum

Ancient Carved Ambers in the J. Paul Getty Museum
Author: Faya Causey
Publisher: Getty Publications
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2020-01-07
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1606066358

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First published in 2012, this catalogue presents fifty-six Etruscan, Greek, and Italic carved ambers from the Getty Museum's collection—the second largest body of this material in the United States and one of the most important in the world. The ambers date from about 650 to 300 BC. The catalogue offers full description of the pieces, including typology, style, chronology, condition, and iconography. Each piece is illustrated. The catalogue is preceded by a general introduction to ancient amber (which was also published in 2012 as a stand-alone print volume titled Amber and the Ancient World). Through exquisite visual examples and vivid classical texts, this book examines the myths and legends woven around amber—its employment in magic and medicine, its transport and carving, and its incorporation into jewelry, amulets, and other objects of prestige. This publication highlights a group of remarkable amber carvings at the J. Paul Getty Museum. This catalogue was first published in 2012 at museumcatalogues.getty.edu/amber/. The present online edition of this open-access publication was migrated in 2019 to www.getty.edu/publications/ambers/; it features zoomable, high-resolution photography; free PDF, EPUB, and Kindle/MOBI downloads of the book; and JPG downloads of the catalogue images.

Variation in the Deterioration of Fossil Resins and Implications for the Conservation of Fossils in Amber

Variation in the Deterioration of Fossil Resins and Implications for the Conservation of Fossils in Amber
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Amber
ISBN:

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The deterioration of fossil resins (crazing, cracking, and darkening) was investigated by comparing the effects of one year of accelerated aging--specifically intensive exposure to light, heat, and fluctuating humidity, both individually and in combination--on samples from several natural resin deposits. These included two Cretaceous ambers (from Myanmar (Burma) and central New Jersey), two Tertiary ambers (from the Baltic and the Dominican Republic), and Holocene copal from Zanzibar. The five resins were chosen for their disparate ages and botanical origins (and thus chemical and physical properties), as well as their paleontological significance. In all cases, pronounced deterioration occurred under combined exposure to light and fluctuating humidity, based on surface crazing and a decrease in absorbance of light in the UV region (360-400 nm). While crazing did not visibly occur in cases of fluctuating humidity in dark conditions, or UV exposure alone, spectrophotometric evidence indicates that some deterioration did take place. Yellowing after exposure to elevated temperatures occurred in all samples tested, with the exception of Burmese amber. All four true ambers exhibited a decrease in UV absorbance after exposure to heat (while copal actually showed an increase). The samples from the five deposits represent three chemical subclasses of fossil resins, and each of the resins reacted differently to the various aging conditions, with New Jersey amber particularly unstable. Based on these results, amber collections should be stored in an environment with stable humidity, relatively low heat, and minimal exposure to light. Anoxic sealing and storage, and particularly embedding amber samples in a high-grade epoxy, may be beneficial, and further investigation is indicated.

SUCCINITE , FOSSILIZED RESIN REDISCOVERED

SUCCINITE , FOSSILIZED RESIN REDISCOVERED
Author: Peter M. Barczak
Publisher: Piotr Barczak
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2022-10-03
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 8395943776

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Baltic amber fascinates thousands of tourists who come to the Baltic Sea. Small children and their parents are eager to bury the sand while looking for precious resin. It is not easy to find, and every large piece of amber found in the “cucumber season” makes headlines. Another category of amber hunters are professionals. These are people who make a living from extracting amber of jewelry value, because each piece of fossilized resin has quite a lot of value. This group is quite hermetic, and the places and methods of extraction remain in the sphere of understatement and are shrouded in a certain mystery. The aforementioned group is particularly interested in the uniqueness of Baltic amber, created by “ancient” rivers, that was already traded by Persians, Vikings and Mycenaeans. From this group, wonderful jewelry products are created. In this book, however, I deal with another aspect of Baltic amber. The initial idea was to analyze the knowledge of this fossilized resin in various aspects. The difficulty in getting to know amber is related to the multidimensionality of the issue. The problem is that science likes to specialize to be precise. This, however, limits knowledge of the issue of amber. If we deal with the question of the formation of the resin, we touch upon issues in the field of geology. This field is enough to fill many years of research and work of a scientist. You can look back a hundred thousand years ago, or into the past millions of years or tens of millions of years, which means that we delve into such vast knowledge that the life of one person may be too short to study the issue well.Then, what do we find in amber? Insects. Thousands of insects. Every geological epoch, each geological era means different families and different species of preserved insects, all of which are to be obtained, dissected, and described in scientific articles. Again, work for a lifetime, infinitely long, because we reach millions of years into the past, and not even in one specific place on the planet – we need to look through the entire planet, because it has been changing over millions of years. What about the plants? After all, they created succinite at different stages of development. What were they like? Are those plants we know today the same ones that existed millions of years ago? Further, some species have become extinct, some have evolved, some grow today in China and others in New Zealand or New Caledonia. Then there is chemistry, the compounds found in amber… Terpenes have already been counted; 40,000. And they can be found in amber. Maybe not in that number, but – since amber was found in peat, brown coal, surrounded by minerals, sediments, and rocks – it could have absorbed the catalog of chemical compounds occurring in the world of plants, trees and shrubs, and also essential oils.

Amber

Amber
Author: Andrew Ross
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 76
Release: 1998
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780674017290

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The fossilized resin of ancient trees, amber preserves organic material--most commonly insects and other invertebrates--and with it the shape and surface detail that are usually obliterated or hopelessly distorted during the mineralization we associate with fossils. This fascinating substance offers a unique intersection of the fields of paleontology, botany, entomology, and mineralogy.

Life in Amber

Life in Amber
Author: George O. Poinar
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 388
Release: 1992
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780804720014

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"Amber is a semi-precious gem that is formed over eons by natural forces out of the resin of trees. Human fascination with amber dates back to prehistoric times, when it was probably considered to have magical powers and was used for adornment and trade. Amber amulets and beads dating from 35,000 to 1,800 B.C. have been found, and where they have been found (for example in graves hundreds of miles from their chemically determined origins) has often helped to establish ancient trade routes." "The preservative qualities of plant resins were well known by the ancients. The Egyptians used resins to embalm their dead, and the Greeks used them to preserve their wine. Amber often preserved fossils, frequently in a pristine state, of all kinds of animal and plant organisms that made contact with the sticky substance and became trapped in it. These fossils include such fragile organisms as nematodes and mushrooms that ordinarily are not preserved under normal processes of fossilization, as well as larger organisms like scorpions and lizards, and the fossils are preserved in their full three-dimensional form, complete with minute details of scales, mouth parts, antennae, and hairs. It has even been suggested that viable DNA may persist in some amber-trapped organisms." "This book is a compendium of all that we know about life found in amber. It surveys all life forms, from microbes to vertebrates and plants, that have been reported from amber deposits throughout the world, beginning with the earliest pieces dating from some 300 million years ago. It also describes the formation of amber and the location, geological history, and early exploration of the major world amber deposits, including those still being worked today." "The book also provides practical information on how to determine fake amber containing present-day forms of life. It can serve as a beginning for tracing the geological history of a particular group of animals or plants or even reconstructing ancient paleoenvironments, and because amber fossils are preserved so completely, in a transparent medium, they can be intimately compared with related living species. Finally, the book discusses what amber fossils can tell us about evolution and speciation, cellular preservation, and paleosymbiosis." "The book is illustrated with 37 color photographs, 154 black-and-white photographs and drawings, and 8 maps."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

A Geochemical Investigation of Carboniferous Amber

A Geochemical Investigation of Carboniferous Amber
Author: P. Sargent Bray
Publisher:
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2007
Genre:
ISBN:

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Rare and unique macroscopic blebs of Carboniferous (320 mya) age amber (fossil wound resin) have been extracted from an Illinois coal and analyzed using Pyrolysis-Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (Py-GC-MS). Results indicate that the macroscopic ambers in these deposits may be classified as mature Class Ic ambers, and contain many diterpenoids associated with modern and fossil resins. Resinite extracted from the same Illinois coal using density gradient centrifugation (DGC) techniques has also been analyzed using Py-GC-MS, and may be classified as mature Class Ib amber. Class assignments are based on the identification of labdanoid decarboxylation products and comparison of retention times with well known references. These data show that primitive gymnosperms were chemically sophisticated and possibly utilized varied types of complex terpenoid wound resins. These ambers, although highly matured, are similar to modern resins, which suggests that vascular plants rapidly evolved the ability to produce complex polylabdanoid resins, and that the synthetic mechanisms have been retained in both angiosperms and gymnosperms since the Carboniferous. These ambers represent the oldest ambers to date to yield useful chemotaxonomic data, and are the first documented unequivocal ambers from the Carboniferous.