Amber - Photograph of Life

Amber is remarkable. It can preserve specimens of life that existed millions of years ago. It also can tell us about the geology, geography and climate of a planet we would barely recognize. Jes Rust, a professor of Invertebrate Paleontology at the Universität Bonn, likens amber to an ancient photograph.

Rust and his colleagues examined some of these ancient photographs—50-52 million year-old pieces of amber from India—and came up with some surprising findings. The results were published in yesterday’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Within the 330 pounds of amber deposits were hundreds of fossilized insects, spiders, crustaceans, plants, fungi and even the remains of several small mammals.

At the time the “photographs” were taken, India was a tropical rainforest, on the move. From the beginning of the PNAS abstract:

For nearly 100 million years, the India subcontinent drifted from Gondwana until its collision with Asia some 50 million years ago…

The amber studied predates that collision, so at the time, India was an isolated island.

Island life is generally highly endemic, or unique, but that’s not what the researchers found among the hundred fossilized spiders, bees, and flies that were found within the amber. And since India had most recently separated from Africa, the scientists wouldn’t have been surprised to find relatives of African species.

But that’s not what they found. The insects in the amber actually had close evolutionary relationships with fossils from other continents, including Asia, Europe, Australia and the Americas.

According to David Grimaldi, of the American Museum of Natural History and another author of the paper:

We know India was isolated, but when and for precisely how long is unclear. The biological evidence in the amber deposit shows that there was some biotic connection.

The researchers posit that the “biotic connection” could be a chain of islands that linked southern Asia to India at the time.

Further research will follow, keeping scientists busy for a long time. Not bad for “ancient photographs.”