Amber: A Window to the Recent Past - Article
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Frank Sherwin, D.Sc. (Hon.) - ... golden fossilized amber begins as resin. Exuded as a sticky liquid from bark or wood, it polymerizes into solid amber. It slowly degrades when left in the open and therefore must be rather quickly buried in dense sediments. There are...

How Did Marine Organisms End Up in Tree Sap? - Article
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Brian Thomas, Ph.D. - ... several bits of marine life that are completely encased in amber, a hard substance thought to originate from hardened tree sap. Amber is renowned for preserving exquisitely detailed fossils, often of insects. In their study published in the...

Fantastic Australian Amber Supports Young World - Article
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Brian Thomas, Ph.D. - ... dazzling array of amber in a rainbow of colors has been discovered at Cape York in far north Australia. Plant and mammal parts, as well as insects and other arthropods, are trapped inside the gems, which formed from tree resin. While researchers...

Why Do Creatures in Ancient Amber Look So Modern? - Article
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Brian Thomas, Ph.D. - ... aid, but scientists found two of them after scanning 70,000 amber droplets from Triassic beds in Italy. How much have mites evolved in the supposed 230 million years since they were entombed in amber? Today's 3,500 species of gall mites...

Amber Jewelry: A Conversation Piece for Creation Evidence - Article
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Brian Thomas, Ph.D. - ... has been prized for centuries for its beauty. Some specimens have dazzling colors, like a cache recently discovered at Cape York in far northern Australia. Insects, diatoms, a lizard leg, fruits, and even mammal hairs have been found trapped...

Scan of Amber-Trapped Spider Shows Recent Origin - Article
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Brian Thomas, Ph.D. - ... piece of oxygen-darkened amber was said to hold a particular arachnid, but it wasn't clearly visible. Scientists made a surprising discovery when a computed tomography scan was able to produce a finely detailed three-dimensional image of a hunting...

Have Scientists Finally Found 'Dinofuzz'? - Article
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Brian Thomas, Ph.D. - ... McKellar have found just this kind of material in Canadian ambers.1 In their study published in Science, his team wrote, "Eleven feather or protofeather specimens were recovered by screening over 4000 Grassy Lake amber inclusions."2 But based on...

Whole Lizard Encased in Amber - Article
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Brian Thomas, Ph.D. - ... Amber Museum in the Mexican city of San Cristóbal de las Casas has a new specimen. Amber sometimes preserves insects, but this specimen contains a whole lizard. This unique discovery confirms two clear trends found in amber...

Amber-Encased Blood Cells Look Fresh - Article
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Brian Thomas, Ph.D. - ... for the clearest amber on Earth? A new study shows that Dominican Republic amber is clear enough to see what's inside. Apparently, ancient parasitic protozoans loved to live inside intact red blood cells. Publishing in the Journal...

'45-Million-Year-Old' Brewer's Yeast Still Works - Article
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Brian Thomas, Ph.D. - ... yeast was found in the digestive tract of a bee encased in amber. How could yeast cells survive and still be able to make beer after such a long time? The yeast strain was revived by Raul Cano at California Polytechnic State University, who has...