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On this page you may find some of the ambers of my collection that show particularities worth consideration and discussion.

  All pictures may be downloaded and used freely.

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Birth of a worm

Part of my collection consists in hundreds of pieces from amber necklaces.  Many of them are still to be examined, all, however, contain some small insect or some other “strange” object.  Recently I examined a piece of amber I believed to contain a fragment of wood.  My curiosity increased while I was polishing it and at last I was deeply moved. It won’t happen often to see a small worm ( egg 0,5mm – worm 1,1mm ) hardly slipped out of his egg and imprisoned in a piece of amber.

General view	Directly illuminated	Operculum

Hereafter part of the interesting letter by Prof. Eugenio Ragazzi:

“The evidence that the animal was able to get in the still liquid mass, as you may see from the kind of cavity around the body, gives further information on the process of fossilization of the amber. Most probably the liquid contained in the egg allowed the worm to survive long enough to be able to slip outside the egg. Maybe it hatched before time, trying desperately to flee from hypoxia, as exchange of gasses  with the outside was no longer possible.”

Mating midges - Rare.

Amber 0567 Diptera Nematocera: Chironomidae	Amber 0568 Diptera Nematocera: Cecidomyiidae

Amber 0699 Diptera Brachycera: Dolichopodidae	Amber 0700 Diptera Nematocera: Chironomidae

Amber 0893 Diptera Nematocera: Chironomidae	Amber 0944 Diptera in copula

Amber 0130 - Amber containing several insects of various kinds and with two groups of eggs

Amber 0130 -  two separate groups of Diptera eggs

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Amber 0130 -    eggs of unidentified insects

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Amber 0315 - Arcaeognatha (?) with eggs

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Amber 839 Diptera Brachycera with eggs.	Trichoptera with eggs. Amber given to the Museo Civico di Scienze Naturali di Bergamo.

Amber 902 Trichoptera with eggs.	Amber 578 Coleoptera with 2 eggs.

Amber 0312 Diptera Brachycera with eggs	Amber 094  Nematocera: Chironomidae with eggs

Amber 121 - Hemiptera with mite

Amber 0511 Diptera with mite	Amber 0059 Diptera with mite

Amber 0583 Diptera with mite	Amber 0250 Diptera with mite on the back

Amber 0612 Diptera with mite on the leggs	Amber 0790 Diptera with 2 mites: wing and abdomen

Amber 0622 Diptera has been invaded by mites.	Amber 0938 Diptera with mite

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Amber 0131 - Frigane with a parasite coupled to a limb

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Mobile bubbles

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It is quite easy to find empty bubbles in baltic amber, whereas they seldom  contain water with mobile bubbles of air. The picture shows an oblong formation, in three parts, containing a small bubble that travels from one sector to the next according the inclination of  the  amber. This allows for the following consideration: - the presence of water is due to damp surrounding (rain, dew).   - the resin must have dropped down abundantly from the tree, running in parallel to the main  axis of the bubbles and it must have been quite fluid in order to be able to include the water that otherwise would have evaporated. - if  you look at the photo the direction of the flow must have been from left to right (really from top to bottom) as in fact the bigger bubble seems “flattened” and shrinked due to the adhesivenessof the resin on its way down.

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Hidden insect

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Recently I bought two pieces of amber showing  a rather big cylindrical formation, red brown and opaque .  I was guaranteed that they are twigs trapped in the resin. As they weren’t expensive I bought them, though sceptical. Apart a larva and some stellate hairs in one and two dipteria in the other they contain nothing interesting, and the surface of the twig shows nothing special. So one day I decided to treat the two pieces with distilled water,and slowly the twigs became transparent and one the amber set free its hidden prisonner, the hollow twig had trapped a rather big insect. I have not yet identified the insect that can be seen only in part, but I presume that the leg belongs to a hemipteron. Yet I am not  convinced that the cylinders are twigs. I think a more ancient resin casting.

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Mass slaughter

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You may often find more than one insect in a piece of amber. Considering that most pieces of amber  are relatively small you may conclude that 40.000.000 years ago there must have been an enormous quantity of insects or that the resin attracted them strongly. What puzzles me is to find pieces of amber with dozens of insects of the same species or also various species, so one might even think of collective suicide.

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Amber 0147 - 37x25mm Diptera Nematocera: Sciaridae 52 ex.	Amber 0148 - 28x25 mm Diptera Nematocera: Sciaridae 58 ex.

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Amber 0232 Many acari and pollens	Amber 0310 12 Diptera Nematocera

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Amber 0580 Many Diptera Nematocera: Sciaridae	Amber 0686 Many Diptera  35 ca.

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Amber 0846  15 Diptera Sciaridae	Amber 0130  Mass of various insects

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The nematocera: sciaridae seem to be more often subject to “collective suicide” ; it seems also particularly strange that all insects (Diptera) are males.

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Amber 0666 - Much pollen, stellate hairs, mites and springtails, probably transported by wind

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Amber with marine concretions

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Amber 0943  -  Nodule of raw amber with marine concretions, length 33 mm.

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Exuviae

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The Exuvia is the exoskeleton abandoned by an insect after molting - quite rare.

Exuvia - amber 0355 Exuvia - amber 0162  Little exuvia - amber 0365  Exuvia - amber 0364 Exuvia - amber 0362 Little exuvia - amber 0356   Exuvia - amber 0888

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Insect droppings

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The excreta of insects that lived in the trees could fall on resin  The observation of these excreta is fairly common in Baltic amber; an entomologist, analyzing their structure,  might perhaps go back to the insect which issued.

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Excreta 6 mm - amber 0645	Excreta chain  5mm - amber 0092

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Excreta scattered - amber 0870	Long excreta - amber 0584