Atlas of Plants and Animals in Baltic Amber by Wolfgang Weitschat and Wilfried Wichard, Friedrich Pfeil, Munich, 鈧�75/$98, ISBN 3931516946 Reviewed by Douglas Palmer
GERALD DURRELL likened amber to fossil whiskey, his favourite tipple. While we may not be able to drink the amber in Wolfgang Weitschat and Wilfried Wichard鈥檚 beautiful Atlas of Plants and Animals in Baltic Amber, we can, at least, see wondrous things in the golden resin.
Once a vast forest of resin-secreting trees covered much of the Baltic region. This excellent English language edition of the Atlas vividly describes and portrays how the sticky aromatic amber resin acted like fly paper, trapping an amazing array of creatures. It imprisoned just about everything from mosses and flowers, through parasitic worms, snails and a huge diversity of arthropods, to lizards, bird feathers and mammal hair, all apparently perfectly preserved. It is such a pity that appearances can be so deceptive.
Advertisement
鈥淔orlorn鈥� is the only way to describe the hope of recovering fossil DNA from amber insects, stimulated by Michael Crichton鈥檚 Jurassic Park. Sadly, it is unlikely to be fulfilled. 快猫短视频s at London鈥檚 Natural History Museum have not been able to replicate any of the previous claims of DNA recovery from fossil amber.
Nevertheless, amber is still of great interest in providing unique insights to the diversity of life, especially the insects, which proliferated in the subtropical climates that persisted for about 10 million years in early Tertiary times, even in northern Europe. Thanks to amber, we can view all aspects of insect life 鈥� from copulation to egg laying and, as the authors say, 鈥渟cenes of everyday ant life鈥� 鈥� just like a time-travelling version of TV鈥檚 Big Brother.
Today, we know of nearly 100 amber deposits, dating back to Carboniferous times (roughly 300 million years ago), but fossiliferous amber dates only from early Cretaceous times, between 120 and 130 million years ago. These extraordinary windows on the life of the past are scattered around the world 鈥� even the tiny Isle of Wight has one. Weitschat and Wichard point out that their atlas is 鈥渁n interim report鈥� because so many interesting problems remain concerning the age of deposits and their exact origin. With more than 400 colour photographs and nearly 100 drawings and maps to browse through, it鈥檚 a good place to start.