In all Jurassic Park media, dinosaur DNA is found in yellow amber. This can only be done if dinosaur cells would be present in amber. In the novels and films, dinosaur cells are present inside mosquitoes that had just fed on dinosaurs. An alternative suggestion is that dinosaur tissue could have ended up in amber.
Collectors and scientists have found not just bugs entombed in tree resin, but even animals as large as lizards, frogs and salamanders can be preserved in impressive detail. Skin, scales, fur and feathers are just some of the incredibly detailed features found in amber.
The amber-bound mosquito in the original Jurassic Park movie is a toxorhynchites, also known as an elephant mosquito. While it looked great on film, this XL mosquito – the world's largest – didn't even consume animal blood at all… let alone the blood of dinosaurs!
Scientists have found more than 1,000 fossil species within its amber, including more than 400 species of insect and 150 species of spider. Occasionally vertebrate fossils also pop up, including anoles and even a salamander.
An international team, including scientists affiliated with NHM, discovered the skull of a tiny dinosaur trapped in 99-million-year-old amber from Myanmar. It was about the size of a bee hummingbird, making it the smallest dinosaur discovered yet.
Paleontologists have found entombed in amber a 99-million-year-old tick grasping the feather of a dinosaur, providing the first direct evidence that the tiny pests drank dinosaur blood.
Many small insects that lived during the Cretaceous era met their maker at the hands of tree sap that engulfed the bugs and hardened into amber. The bugs trapped inside fossilized and remained frozen for millions of years, unaffected by the passage of time.
Symplocos kowalewskii (Symplocaceae) from Baltic amber is the by far largest flower inclusion known. Its in-situ pollen, combined with morphology of the corolla and androecium, indicates strong affinities to extant Asian species of S. subgen. Symplocos.
Amber is formed from resin exuded from tree bark (figure 9), although it is also produced in the heartwood. Resin protects trees by blocking gaps in the bark. Once resin covers a gash or break caused by chewing insects, it hardens and forms a seal.
In 1872, scientists examined a large, fossilized flower preserved in amber from a mine in Russia. They identified it as an extinct flowering evergreen plant named Stewartia kowalewskii. Then, for 150 years, the immortalized blossom sat in a museum collection, unstudied.
Called Toxorhynchites, the particular mosquito species used in the film was embedded in amber and placed on top of a cane carried by Richard Attenborough, who played John Hammond, the creator of the fictional park in the movie, a post on Smith's Facebook added.
Researchers said they have discovered the oldest-known fossils of mosquitoes - two males entombed in pieces of amber dating to 130 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period and found near the town of Hammana in Lebanon.
Amber can also preserve micro-scale creatures, such as these bizarre mold pigs. Discovered in 2019, these tiny animals resemble tardigrades, which are sometimes referred to as water bears. The Cenozoic microinvertebrates were found in the Dominican Republic and dated at 30 million years old.
Even though arthropods are more than 400 million years old, until now, the oldest record of the animals in amber only dates to about 130 million years. The newly discovered specimens are about 100 million years older, the first amber arthropods ever found from the Triassic Period.
Amber from the former is older, and thus preferred on the market, but that obtained from the latter is more likely to have insect inclusions. Amber prices can range from $20 to $40,000 or more.
In the unlikely event that a bead should be ingested, amber is a non-toxic substance and is not harmful. The necklaces fasten with a lead-free, plastic amber-colored clasp that opens and closes easily, which doubles as the safety-release mechanism.
So, a whole Dinosaur preserved in Amber is extremely unlikely due to the size of Dinosaurs. Amber is merely just tree sap this is why the only evidence of Dinosaurs preserved in Amber are mosquitos (small creatures) who may have Dinosaur DNA in its stomach because of the nature of its prey being blood.
At present there are nearly 200 known amber deposits throughout the world and new ones are discovered every year. Amber has been found on all continents except Antarctica. Only a few of the deposits have achieved economic importance, but each is of scientific interest.
Amber is fossilized sap from ancient pine trees. Just like today's pine trees, ancient trees occasionally oozed sticky sap, which insects or small animals could get stuck in and covered.
Eventually, the resin will turn to amber. The only problem is that you would need to find a very large tree, because… the amount of amber created by this process is generally quite small. It might be possible to fossilise your head, but probably not your whole body.
Fossilized insect from 100 million years ago is oldest record of primitive bee with pollen. Beetle parasites clinging to a primitive bee 100 million years ago may have caused the flight error that, while deadly for the insect, is a boon for science today.
Ninety-nine-million-year-old fossil is a rare specimen indeed. Look closely at this piece of fossilized amber and you'll spot something unusual: a cockroach trapped with its own feces (arrow). The find, recovered from Myanmar's rich amber deposits, is 99 million years old.
