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- Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Denmark, Sweden, Great Britain and Holland. Other important amber sites around the world include the Dominican Republic, southern Mexico, northeastern China, Romania, Burma (Myanmar), Sicily, western Canada, the U.S. (Alaska and New Jersey) and some locations in the Middle East and northern Siberia.
Amber Fakery
Because amber is highly cherished for its rarity, numerous imitations of amber have been made from other minerals, so one should take care to avoid the substitutes. These substitute materials include copal, dyed horn, shellac, resin and more recently polyester resin or plastic. Copal is also hardened tree resin in a semi fossilized form, but not nearly as old as amber. It can be differentiated from amber by hardness, melting point and solubility. A major forgery industry has also developed which has inclusions of small organisms in amber.
There are some myths about how to make amber. In an old Chinese text, Shennong bcncaojing, it states �Amber can be made from chicken-eggs by the following method: Take an egg, mix the yolk and white of it, and boil it. As long as it is soft, an object can be cut out of it; this must be soaked in bitter wine for several nights, until it hardens; then rice-flour is added to it.�
One way to ascertain whether something is amber or not is to rub amber against cloth and see if the static electricity will pick up paper. Most materials do not have this characteristic. Even processed or pressed amber (called ambroid) apparently will not pick up paper. In an old Chinese encyclopedia, Ke Zhi jing yuan about amber it states... �that only the kind whose colour is like that of blood, which, when made warm by being rubbed with cloth, attracts mustard-seeds, is genuine�. Another method to detect real amber from imitation substances is to touch a hot needle to amber or copal. They give off a smell of resin, while other materials have different odours.
Life in Amber
Pieces of amber have been found which contain once living organisms in a pristine state. Insects, scorpions and lizards have been trapped and encapsulated by the sticky resin flows, and were thus mummified for millions of years. Since ancient times, amber with entombed insects was considered to have magical powers and was much sought after.
Certain types of DNA may exist in the fragile organisms in the amber. In Michael Crichton�s fictional novel, Jurassic Park, made into a popular movie by Steven Spielberg, blood sucking insects like midges or mosquitoes encapsulated in pieces of amber contained the DNA of dinosaurs, which were
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