The 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 fossils.

The discovery site lies within the state of Chiapas in far southern Mexico. Amber collecting has become a key economic activity in that region.

The area surrounding what is now Wuda, Inner Mongolia, once teemed with tropical plants before a tremendous ancient volcanic explosion overwhelmed it. The ash-entombed forest, buried between coal layers, left such remarkably preserved fossilized plants that artists and paleontologists have been able to reconstruct the former wet-forest landscape.

Howell Thomas, senior paleontological preparator for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, was skeptical when a woman claimed that she found a fossilized whale brain in San Luis Obispo County, California, nine years ago.