Word: amberes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...anybody who has seen Jurassic Park knows, plants and animals sealed in amber are a potential source of prehistoric DNA. Scientists have extracted genetic material from, among other things, a 17 million-year-old magnolia leaf, a 30 million-year-old termite and a 120 million-year-old weevil. Yet no serious biologist believes it will ever be possible to clone a dinosaur from a few bits of DNA. Even so excellent a preservative as amber apparently can't keep DNA from breaking down into fragments that may be scientifically interesting but are biologically inert. That's one reason many...
...entomologist David Grimaldi of New York City's American Museum of Natural History has announced a find he calls "scientifically the most important of all amber fossils." It's three tiny flowers, probably from an oak tree, that date to the age of the dinosaurs, some 90 million years ago. That makes them the oldest intact flowers ever found in amber, and an important clue to the origin of the flowering plants that now dominate the earth...
...Amber's dual roles as artistic medium and scientific research tool have rarely intersected. But that's just what they'll do starting later this week. On Saturday the American Museum will unveil, under Grimaldi's curatorial supervision, the most comprehensive display of amber ever mounted. The exhibition, "Amber: Window to the Past," features 146 fossil specimens and 94 decorative objects from museums and private collections all over the world, including Stone Age amulets from Scandinavia, 18th and 19th century Chinese figurines and treasures once owned by the Medicis of Italy and the Czars of Russia. Many of these artworks...
...substance that's essentially dried-up tree resin. The viscous stuff that eventually turns into amber comes from a variety of ancient trees, mostly conifers, including pines and extinct relatives of sequoias and cedars, but also some deciduous trees. It probably evolved, says Grimaldi, as a defense against wood-boring insects. "As it dripped down the bark," he explains, "it acted like flypaper and encapsulated them, hermetically sealing the trees' wounds at the same time...
...scientists, a piece of amber with nothing trapped inside is not so exciting. For artists and their patrons, however, it is an uncut gem. According to Grimaldi, Stone Age artisans used amber found on beaches of the Baltic Sea 10,000 years ago to carve amulets, pendants and tiny figurines. Indeed, Baltic deposits were Western civilization's primary source of amber at least as far back...