The Baltic region is home to the largest known deposit of amber, called Baltic amber or succinite, with about 80% of the world's known amber found there. It dates from 44 million years ago (Eocene). It has been estimated that these forests created over 105 tons of amber.
The term Baltic amber is generic, so amber from the Bitterfeld brown coal mines in Saxony (Eastern Germany) goes under the same name. Bitterfeld amber was previously believed to be only 20–22 million years old (Miocene), but a comparison of the animal inclusions revealed that it is most probably genuine Baltic amber that has only been redeposited in a Miocene deposit.
Because Baltic amber contains about 8% succinic acid, it is also termed succinite.
It was thought since the 1850s that the resin that became amber was produced by the tree Pinites succinifer, but research in the 1980s came to the conclusion that the resin originates from several species. More recently it has been proposed, on the evidence of Fourier-transform infrared microspectroscopy (FTIR) analysis of amber and resin from living trees, that conifers of the family Sciadopityaceae were responsible. The only extant representative of this family is the Japanese umbrella pine, Sciadopitys verticillata.
Numerous extinct genera and species of plants and animals have been discovered and scientifically described from inclusions in Baltic amber. Baltic amber includes the most species-rich fossil insect fauna discovered to date.
Famous quotes containing the word amber:
“Swimmer of noonday, lean for the perfect dive
To the dead Mother’s face, whose subtile down
You had not seen take amber light alive.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)