Amber With Insect Inclusions

March 05, 2012

Baltic_Amber_necklace_with_insects_inclusions_ (4)

Photographer: Mila Zinkova 
Summary Author: Mila Zinkova

A few years ago while visiting Riga, Latvia, I bought a necklace made out of rough pieces of Baltic amber, which were estimated to be 40-60 million years old. Much later, I decided to inspect the necklace with a magnifying glass and to my pleasant surprise discovered not just one but two insects; what looks to be a fly and a mosquito were trapped within this fossil resin. You can see that the mosquito was almost crushed when the linking was strung through the amber piece. Note that the fly could be a member of the order Hymenoptera and not Diptera. The origin of Baltic amber is thought to be from a family of plants known as Sciadopityaceae, which lived in what is now northern Europe.

Photo Details: Camera: Olympus u1050SW,S1050SW; Software Adobe Photoshop CS3 Windows; Exposure Time 0.010s (1/100); Aperture ƒ/6.3; ISO equivalent 80; Focal Length (35mm) 51

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