Geoscience Reference
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percentage of the fauna in the tropics in
contrast to temperate zones, and
Dominican amber represents a tropical
forest. Dominican amber was produced by
the legume
Hymenaea
, while Baltic amber
is from a gymnosperm: Araucariaceae or
Pinaceae. An interesting study by Penney
and Langan (2006) compared the spider
faunas between Dominican and Baltic
ambers. They found that the behavioural
guilds were quite fairly matched (i.e. both
resins sampled the same numbers of
ambushers, hunters, and so on) except
that there were more large web-weavers in
Baltic amber. Large web-weavers dominate
in structurally complex habitats (lots of
twigs and crevices) so they concluded that
the Baltic amber forest, and specifically the
resin-producing tree, was likely to have
provided a more complex habitat than the
Hymenaea
of the Dominican amber forest.
Dominican amber is rather paler than
Baltic and clearer, lacking the abundant
oak hairs and the annoying emulsion
which often obscures inclusions in Baltic
amber. The preservation of inclusions in
Dominican amber is generally regarded as
superior to all other ambers.
F
URTHER
R
EADING
Andersen, N. M. and Poinar, G. O. 1998.
A marine water strider (Hemiptera:
Veliidae) from Dominican amber.
Entomologica Scandinavica
29
, 1-9.
Bousfield, E. L. and Poinar, G. O. 1995.
New terrestrial amphipod from
Tertiary amber deposits of the
Dominican Republic.
Journal of
Crustacean Biology
15
, 746-755.
De Vries, P. J. and Poinar, G. O. 1997.
Ancient butterfly-ant symbiosis:
direct evidence from Dominican
amber.
Proceedings of the Royal
Society of London B
264
, 1137-1140.
Grimaldi, D. A. 1996.
Amber: Window to
the Past
. Harry N. Abrams, Inc and
American Museum of Natural History,
New York.
Grimaldi, D. A, Shedrinsky, A., Ross, A.
and Baer N. S. (1994). Forgeries
of fossils in 'amber': history,
identification and case studies.
Curator
37
, 251-274.
Iturralde-Vinent, M. A. 2001. Geology of
the amber-bearing deposits of the
Greater Antilles.
Caribbean Journal of
Science
37
, 141-167.
Krishna, K. and Grimaldi, D. A. 1991.
A new fossil species from Dominican
amber of the living Australian termite
genud
Mastotermes
(Isoptera:
Mastotermitidae).
American Museum
Novitates
3021
, 1-10.
Leybourne, R. C., Deedrick, D. W. and
Hueber, F. M. 1994. Feather in amber
is earliest New World fossil of Picidae.
Wilson Bulletin
106
, 18-25.
MacPhee, R. D. E. and Grimaldi, D. A.
1996. Mammal bones in Dominican
amber.
Nature
380
, 489-490.
Mari Mutt, J. A. 1983. Collembola in
amber from the Dominican Republic.
Proceedings of the Entomological
Society of Washington
85
, 575-587.
Martinez, R. and Schlee, D. 1984. Die
Dominikanischen Bernsteinminen der
Nordkordillere, speziel auch aus der
Sicht der Werkstätten.
Stuttgarter
Beiträge zur Naturkunde, Serie C
18
,
79-84.
Martínez-Delclós, X., Briggs, D.E.G. and
Peñalver, E. 2004. Taphonomy of
insects in carbonates and amber.
Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology,
Palaeoecology
203
, 19-64.
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