Amber and the Flood

Langenheim, Jean H.  Plant Resins: Chemistry, Evolution, Ecology, and Ethnobotany.  Portland: Timber Press.  2003.  A book-length survey of plant resins, covering their chemistry, evolution and ecology.  The article uses it for the author's verdict that the millions-of-years claim is unsupported by data, and for her account of how maturity relates to age.

1. 1a.

   Pages 144–145:  “With increasing age, the maturity of any given resin will increase, but the rate at which it occurs depends on the prevailing geologic conditions as well as the composition of the resin.  Therefore, maturity and age usually cannot be directly correlated.  Changes appear to be a response primarily to geothermal stress since chemical change in the resin accelerates at higher temperatures.” ↩

2. 1b.

   Pages 145–146:  “Reactions in the maturation process, such as cross-linking, isomerization, and cyclization, account for decreased solubility (Clifford and Hatcher 1995) but assertions that maturation to fossil resin takes millions of years (e.g., Poinar 1992a) are unsupported by data and do not contribute to understanding how resin should be distinguished as fossilized.”  “there is no objective chemical analysis for reliable determination of the relative maturity of fossil resin.” ↩ ↩

3. 1c.

   Page 166:  “Although the amber has been secondarily concentrated in the famous blue earth (blau Erde) deposits over approximately 20 million years, the apparently inexhaustible quantities of amber and frequent occurrence of large pieces (used for making art objects) have raised questions as to how or why trees would have produced so much resin.”  Conwentz's 1890 "succinosis" is discussed there. ↩

4. 1d.

   Pages 274–275:  “This peninsula, only about 1000 km², has yielded 90% of European amber”.  “The famous Palmnicken mine opened in 1875 and produced 204,120 kg of amber that year ... Its yield increased continuously until 1895 when, incredibly, 544,320 kg were extracted.” ↩ ↩

5. 1e.

   Page 366:  Frankincense.  “On average, one tree can yield about 1.5 kg of resin each year.”  Page 402:  Kauri.  “Pieces weighing 1-2 kg are usual for crutch gum, but lumps of 23-90 kg have been obtained from a single tree.” ↩

6. 1f.

   Page 404:  “Between 1850 and 1950, 450 million kilograms of kauri resin were exported from New Zealand, primarily to North America and England.  Kauri gum buyers recognized at least 50 different grades, from almost colorless and clear dial gum to almost black swamp gum.”  “From the earliest Maori occupation until the first pakeha (people other than Maori) arrived, kauri gum could be found lying on the ground on the North Island.”  Page 303:  “20,000 at the peak of production in the 1890s”.  The number counts gum diggers. ↩

7. 1g.

   Page 320:  The French Pinus pinaster system:  “At 20 years, the second stage began.  Undesirable trees were turpentined severely (gemmage a mort), cut out, and sold for timber.” ↩

Yu, Tingting et al.  “An ammonite trapped in Burmese amber.”  PNAS 116(23):11345–11350.  2019.  A report on one piece of Burmese amber from a mine near Noije Bum village in northern Myanmar, holding a juvenile ammonite (an extinct shelled sea animal), marine snails, isopods and at least 40 arthropods.  The authors used X-ray micro-computed tomography to make 3D images of the ammonite, which they use as evidence for a late Albian to early Cenomanian age for the amber.  The article uses it for two points: that the marine shells and debris in the amber came from a beach, not from the sea floor, and that the ammonite helps date the amber.

1. 2a.

   Section abstract, page 11345:  “The incomplete preservation and lack of soft body of the ammonite and marine gastropods suggest that they were dead and underwent abrasion on the seashore before entombment.”  “It is most likely that the resin fell to the beach from coastal trees, picking up terrestrial arthropods and beach shells and, exceptionally, surviving the high-energy beach environment to be preserved as amber.” ↩

2. 2b.

   Page 11349:  “It is rare to find aquatic organisms in amber, and it is extremely rare to find marine organisms in amber, let alone macroscopic marine organisms mixed with intertidal, terrestrial, and potentially freshwater aquatic organisms.” ↩ ↩

3. 2c.

   Page 11345:  “The ammonite is a juvenile Puzosia (Bhimaites) and provides supporting evidence for a Late Albian–Early Cenomanian age of the amber.” ↩ ↩

4. 2d.

   Page 11349:  The authors cite Schmidt & Dilcher 2007 for the finding that resin barely solidifies when submerged in water, as their reason for preferring entrapment on a beach over entrapment under water. ↩ ↩

5. 2e.

   The piece is 33 × 29 × 9.5 mm and holds at least 40 arthropods, mostly forest-floor taxa (oribatid mites, millipedes, a spider, twelve adult insects); four marine gastropod shells, two of them attributable to Mathilda sp.; and one ammonite with its outer shell lost and its body chamber empty.  Pages 11345, 11347:  The isopods are described as.  “consistent with littoral or supralittoral taxa”. ↩

Landis, Gary P., and Robert A. Berner.  “Analysis of gases in fossil amber.”  American Journal of Science 318:590–601.  2018.  A research paper by the two authors of the 1988 claim, who analysed the gas released when pieces of amber sampled worldwide were crushed under vacuum.  Their analyses show a mixture like air, and they suggest the gas inclusions may represent, at least in part, ancient air.  The article quotes it as the authors' own return to the question thirty years after 1988.

1. 3a.

   Page 590:  The abstract, as the article quotes it. ↩ ↩

2. 3b.

   Page 598:  “One might certainly expect air in bubbles of the original resin to diffuse into the liquid resin and for the O₂ from the bubbles to react with it;  in this respect, our critics may have a point.  However, we postulate that the resin/amber hardened very quickly with formation of cross-linked terpenoid polymer chains and that the diffusivity of gases in the resin became so low that only a very thin oxidation-reaction rim formed around each bubble ... This idea needs testing by studies of modern resin in the process of formation.”  On argon released by decomposition:  “gave ⁴⁰Ar/³⁶Ar appropriate for the age of amber”.  suggesting.  “essentially closed system behavior.” ↩ ↩

3. 3c.

   Page 598:  A heating test on O₂-rich Cedar Lake amber.  “A sample of O₂-rich Cedar Lake amber was heated in a vacuum at 25 °C to 100 °C over a period of 12 hours ... We found that little O₂ remained in all crushes, and this strongly suggests that reaction of O₂ with amber occurs during heating over a matter of only hours.”  Page 599:  On the paleoatmosphere estimate:  “Data from this study, similar to Berner and Landis (1988) can be used to calculate a Cretaceous atmospheric O₂ concentration of 35 percent. This estimate is much higher than the composition of our current atmosphere, and is not in agreement with theoretical modeling. For example, using the model GEOCARBSULF, it has been suggested that atmospheric O₂ was below modern levels for a majority of the Cretaceous period (for example, Berner, 2009). Given that amber readily consumes O₂ both prior to and during the crushing process, we might expect depressed atmospheric O₂ estimates to result from these studies. But how would O₂ concentrations in amber air bubbles actually increase above atmospheric levels?” ↩ ↩ ↩

4. 3d.

   Page 599:  Dinosaur Park amber gave this, attributed to oxygen uptake during a forest fire:  “greater than 50 percent O₂”.  Heating O₂-free amber in air at 120 °C for 15 h reproduced the effect; afterwards,  “it took up O₂ to levels similar to those found in the untreated material.” ↩ ↩

Anderson, Ken B. et al.  “The nature and fate of natural resins in the geosphere – II. Identification, classification and nomenclature of resinites.”  Organic Geochemistry 18(6):829–841.  1992.  A chemistry paper by researchers at Argonne National Laboratory that sorts resinites, the fossil resins that include amber, into four classes by their chemical structure.  To leave out the effects of maturity, the classes describe the original resin, not the aged sample.  The article uses it for the principle that the chemistry of amber tracks maturity, which reflects both age and thermal history.

1. 4a.

   Page 831:  The paper defines Class I (labdatriene polymers, including Baltic succinite as Class Ia), Class II (cadinene polymers), Class III (natural polystyrenes) and Class IV.  “Like all forms of sedimentary organic matter, the structure and composition of resinites undergo systematic changes over the course of geologic time.  The rates at which these processes proceed are almost certainly strongly temperature dependent ... For this reason, it is inappropriate to describe structural changes in resinites as a function of the "age" of the sample.  Rather, it is more appropriate to describe changes in the structure and composition of these materials as a function of "maturity", which reflects both age and thermal history.” ↩ ↩

Solórzano Kraemer, Mónica M. et al.  “A revised definition for copal and its significance for palaeontological and Anthropocene biodiversity-loss studies.”  Scientific Reports 10:19904.  2020.  A review article by four authors from Germany, Spain and the United States.  It proposes that copal be defined as resin aged between 2.58 million years (Ma) and 1760 AD, and it sets the older definitions side by side.  The article uses it for the clash between those definitions, for its statement that there is no evidence for one claimed advantage of older resin, and for its radiocarbon dates on young resins.

1. 5a.

   Page 2:  “First, it was considered that resin younger than a million years old could be called copal.  Later, it was proposed as part of a scale based on absolute ¹⁴C dating.  In 1996, Anderson used the term 'modern resin' for those resins less than 250 years old ..., 'ancient resin' for resins between 250 and 5000 years old, and 'subfossil resin' for resins with an age between 5000 and 40,000 years.”  Page 3:  “We propose here a new definition of the term copal:  ancient resin having an age between 2.58 Ma and 1760 AD.” ↩

2. 5b.

   Page 3:  “Another work considered that resins of thousands of years to a million years in age better retain their original molecular structure and are therefore better termed as copal;  however, there is no evidence for this, and the fossilization process of resin remains poorly understood.”  “The youngest known amber deposits are the Amazonian amber in Peru and the Bornean amber in the Indo-Australian Archipelago, both of which are considered to be 12 million years old.” ↩ ↩

3. 5c.

   Page 3:  Kenyan and Tanzanian copals.  “originated from resin exuded around 1960 AD”.  “Dominican copal can reach an age of > 36,000 years BP”.  Mizunami (Japan) 33,100 years BP; New Zealand 2,000 to 37,000 years BP; Colombian 10,600 years BP; Sulawesi 4,000 years BP. ↩

Rust, Jes et al.  “Biogeographic and evolutionary implications of a diverse paleobiota in amber from the early Eocene of India.”  PNAS 107(43):18360–18365.  2010.  A research paper by an international team describing amber from the Cambay Shale of western India, dated 50 to 52 million years.  The team collected about 150 kg of amber from lignite mines and dissolved the soft amber to extract whole insects, finding more than 700 arthropod inclusions in 14 orders and more than 55 families.  The article uses it as its example of old amber that is still chemically unhardened.

1. 6a.

   Page 18361:  “Cambay amber is poorly crosslinked and polymerized, as freshly exposed surfaces are soft and often tacky, and pieces dissolve completely in toluene and chloroform.  This unique property allows extraction of entire inclusions.”  The strata.  “have been assigned an age of mid- to early-Ypresian (50–52 Ma) based on shark teeth, the index foraminiferan Nummulites burdigalensis burdigalensis, and dinoflagellates.” ↩ ↩

2. 6b.

   Page 18361:  “Approximately 150 kg of amber were collected within deep lignitic deposits of the Older Cambay Shale ... Amber was concentrated in near-shore sediments by low energy, brackish water and marine incursions into seams 5–10-cm thick of an 'amber conglomerate,' with most pieces ranging in size from sand grains to several centimeters.” ↩

Seyfullah, Leyla J. et al.  “Production and preservation of resins – past and present.”  Biological Reviews 93:1684–1714.  2018.  A review of how living trees make resin and how the resin turns into amber, by six authors at universities and museums in Germany, Finland and France.  It also reports new observations on resin from araucarian conifers.  The article uses it for its table of amber deposits that formed in coal and lignite, and for the New Zealand kauri swamps, which show that large resin deposits can build up in thousands of years.

1. 7a.

   Table 1, pages 1686–1688:  Fushun amber (Guchengzi Formation):  “Autoch.–para. in coal”.  Sakhalin amber (Naibuchi Formation):  “Autoch.–para. in coal”.  Oise amber:  “Para.–alloch. in lignite”.  Grassy Lake / Cedar Lake:  “coals, washed out”.  New Jersey Raritan:  “lignite”.  Spanish amber:  “Autoch.–para. in coals”.  Lebanon:  “in lignites”.  Baltic amber:  “Alloch. reworked”.  Page 1705:  “Amber may also occur in association with coal seams (Table 1) formed by ancient swamps.” ↩ ↩

2. 7b.

   Page 1694:  “typical amounts of resin at the forking of branches is 1–2 kg, however lumps of 23–90 kg have be[en] obtained from a single tree.” ↩

3. 7c.

   Page 1699:  “The preserved swamps vary in age from approximately 20000 to 100,000 years old (based on carbon-dating;  Boswijk, 2005).  Agathis australis is naturally highly resinous ... and large deposits accumulated over a relatively short time span of only thousands of years, potentially contradicting ideas proposed by Poinar (1992) and Weitschat & Wichard (2010) that the exudations required to form the Baltic amber deposit occurred over millions of years.”  “8000 tons per annum were removed for sale between 1907 and 1914 (Anon, 1921).  Over 450,000 tons of resin in total have been removed (Haywood, 1989) with some nuggets weighing more than 270 kg each (McNeill, 1991).  Most of this massive amount of resin is reported to have come from within 3 m of the surface.” ↩ ↩

4. 7d.

   Page 1705:  “Weitschat & Wichard (2002) suggested that the Baltic amber deposit represents at least 10 million years.  Yet our observations based on the vast subfossil resin deposits from Agathis australis in New Zealand ..., and those of Langenheim (2003) on leguminous resin from the Congo basin (East Africa) and Amazonia, indicate that very large time spans are not always necessary.”  Page 1690:  At the Baltic.  “several hundred tons are extracted annually (Weitschat & Wichard, 2010).” ↩

Computed for this article.  Preserved resin flux = (trees/ha) × (kg/tree/yr) × (fraction preserved and delivered).  Generous case:  200 trees/ha × 1 kg × 0.10 = 2 t/km²/yr, so 640,000 t from 10⁴ km² of forest in 32 years, or from 10⁵ km² in about 3 years.  Conservative case:  200 × 0.05 kg × 0.01 = 0.01 t/km²/yr, so 6,400 years from 10⁴ km² or 640 years from 10⁵ km².  Standing-stock case:  5 kg recoverable resin per tree × 200 trees/ha = 100 t/km², so 640,000 t is the stock on 6,400 km² at full recovery or 64,000 km² at 10%.  Inputs:  measured tapped yields (García-Méijome 2023;  Langenheim 2003 p. 366);  measured standing lumps (Langenheim p. 402;  Seyfullah 2018 p. 1694);  assumed stem density, natural exudation rate and preservation fraction.  No per-tree natural exudation rate exists in any source read;  the nearest measurement is constitutive resin flow in loblolly pine of 0.20 to 3.14 grams per day from a single 8-mm bark wound (Knebel et al. 2008, p. 849), which overlaps the assumed 0.05 to 1 kg per tree-year (0.07 to 1.15 kg per wound-year) only if a tree is taken as one wound.  The Baltic mass itself is the estimated 640,000 t, now verified against the primary page (see the Weitschat & Wichard footnote);  the same page gives the Blue Earth as 2 to 10 m thick "with an average amber content of roughly 2.5kg per cubic metre." ↩ ↩

Knebel, Larissa et al.  “Resin flow responses to fertilization, wounding and fungal inoculation in loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) in North Carolina.”  Tree Physiology 28:847–853.  2008.  Page 849:  Constitutive flow, measured in spring and summer in 6- and 12-year-old trees, fertilised and not, was 0.20 to 3.14 g per day per 8-mm wound.  A controlled experiment on loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) in two North Carolina plantations, aged 6 and 12 years, which wounded trees, inoculated some wounds with a fungus, fertilized half the trees and measured how fast resin flowed.  It found that wounding and inoculation raised resin flow for at least 90 days, and that fertilizer raised the ongoing flow, though only the younger trees kept the higher flow after wounding.  The article cites its flow rates as a plausible resin yield for its arithmetic, and the study covers one species in one region. ↩

Wolfe, Alexander P. et al.  “A new proposal concerning the botanical origin of Baltic amber.”  Proceedings of the Royal Society B 276:3403–3412.  2009.  A chemistry study that compared infrared spectra of Baltic amber with 79 modern conifer resins and fossil resins, and proposed that its source trees belonged to the family Sciadopityaceae, which has one living species, Sciadopitys verticillata.  It argues against the older views that the trees were Araucariaceae or Pinaceae.  The article uses it for two points: that the amber lies in rock it was not formed in, and that the glauconite around it formed on an oxygen-poor sea floor.

1. 10a.

   Page 3403:  “Baltic amber is never found in its original stratigraphic position, having been redeposited in Eocene glauconitic marine sediments as well as Neogene fluvial and glacigenic deposits.” ↩ ↩

2. 10b.

   Page 3410:  FTIR spectra cluster Baltic amber with modern Sciadopitys verticillata rather than with Pinaceae or Araucariaceae, and succinic acid is.  “largely a diagenetic product, and therefore of no chemotaxonomic significance.” ↩ ↩

3. 10c.

   Page 3410:  “The most precise radiometric ages for marine strata containing Baltic amber are 44.1 ± 1.1 and 47.0 ± 1.5 Ma, based on ⁴⁰Ar/⁴⁰K analyses of glauconite (Ritzkowski 1997).  As these represent minimum ages for amber-producing forests, initial formation of Baltic amber followed closely the early Eocene climate optimum.” ↩

Kasiński, Jacek R. et al.  “Paleocene and Eocene deposits on the eastern margin of the Gulf of Gdańsk (Yantarny P-1 borehole, Kaliningrad region, Russia).”  Geological Quarterly 64(1):29–53.  2020.  A study of a borehole at Yantarny, the amber-mining town on the Samland coast of Kaliningrad, which logs the Paleogene rock layers, dates them with pollen and dinoflagellate cysts (fossil plankton cysts), and analyses their heavy minerals.  It finds many gaps in the record, marked by hardgrounds, and says that opinions differ on the age of the Prussian Formation.  The article uses the borehole log to describe the bed that holds the amber.

1. 11a.

   Page 30:  “Microfaunal remains in the Prussian Formation of the Kaliningrad region are extremely rare and so far no index taxa have been found (Kharin and Lukashina, 2002).  Therefore, there are contrasting opinions about the age of this formation ... The first K-Ar datings of glauconite pointed to an age of 35–41 Ma, corresponding to the Bartonian (Kaplan et al., 1977;  Zagorodnykh et al., 2001).  However, the age of the glauconite from the Blue Earth was significantly earlier, at 44.1 ±1.1 and 47.0 ±1.5 Ma, corresponding to the Lutetian (Ritzkowski, 1997).  The latter suggestion seems to contradict the idea that the marine sedimentation in this area was interrupted during the Lutetian.” ↩ ↩

2. 11b.

   Page 30:  “Amber distribution seems to have been affected by alongshore currents, that caused redeposition of the amber-bearing sediments”.  The Upper Blue Earth is.  “developed as sandy and clayey silts/siltstones with glauconite and amber.”  Section borehole log, pp. 32ff:  The Prussian Formation lies at 9.3–18.5 m depth, and the Lower Blue Earth Member (32.5–35.9 m) contains.  “fragments of amber, 1–10 mm in size”.  All units are glauconite-quartz sands and silts, described as.  “strongly bioturbated.” ↩ ↩

Shi, Guanghai et al.  “Age constraint on Burmese amber based on U-Pb dating of zircons.”  Cretaceous Research 37:155–163.  2012.  A dating study of zircon crystals, tiny minerals that survive erosion, separated from the sedimentary rock that holds Burmese amber in northern Myanmar, using uranium-lead dating.  The magmatic zircons, which came from volcanic rock fragments in the rock, gave 98.79 ± 0.62 million years, which the authors treat as a maximum age for the amber.  The article quotes this figure in its account of how old Burmese amber can be.

1. 12a.

   Section abstract:  “The burmite-bearing rock is sedimentary and consists mainly of rounded lithic clasts (0.03–0.15 mm in diameter) ... Among the lithic clasts are mostly volcanic rocks.  Zircons separated from the amber matrix form two groups:  Group-I zircons are overgrown ... and their Ion microprobe ²⁰⁶Pb/²³⁸U ages fall into a very narrow range of ∼102 Ma–∼108 Ma;  Group-II zircons are typical magmatic ones with rhythmically flat zones, inferred to be derived from volcanic rock clasts, and yielded a concordia ²⁰⁶Pb/²³⁸U age of 98.79 ± 0.62 Ma. ... the age of 98.79 ± 0.62 Ma therefore can be used as a maximum limit for the burmite (either at or after), establishing an earliest Cenomanian age for the fossilized inclusions.”  It is a maximum depositional age on a volcaniclastic sandstone, read by the authors as the age of a nearby eruption; the number of zircons is not in the abstract. ↩ ↩

Stach, Przemysław et al.  “The study of Dominican amber-bearing sediments from Siete Cañadas and La Cumbre with a discussion on their origin.”  Scientific Reports 11:16997.  2021.  A study of the minerals and organic chemistry of the rocks that hold Dominican amber, from a borehole at Siete Cañadas and from the La Cumbre coal shales, using X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry.  It concludes that the two deposits formed in separate basins, both with marine influence, and that the Siete Cañadas basin was a shallow saltwater basin.  The article relies on its coal-maturity reading and its account of the age dispute.

1. 13a.

   Page 3:  “the layers of solid, black coloured lignite with metallic lustre form coal seams (Fig. 2).  The lignite layers mainly occur inside coaly and/or sandy clays, locally enriched in aggregates of gypsum.  Amber is found within these lignite strata or 1.5–2.1 m below it.”  Section abstract, page 1:  The organic matter is.  “of mixed terrestrial/marine origin”.  La Cumbre sedimentation was.  “probably in the conditions of the lagoon environment”.  The coal rank is.  “from meta-lignite to sub-bituminous coal (random reflectance of coal—Rro = 0.39%).”  Page 2:  The age.  “is still in a dispute, and is estimated as middle Miocene 15–20 Ma, 15.75–12.58 Ma, or Pliocene–early Pleistocene.” ↩ ↩

Ross, Andrew J. et al.  “A critical review of the age of Baltic amber from the Samland Peninsula, Russia.”  Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1–14.  2026.  A review article that re-dates the beds holding Baltic amber by matching published dinoflagellate cyst records (fossil cysts of single-celled plankton) to the Geologic Time Scale 2020.  It concludes that the Upper Blue Earth, the main amber bed, is 36–35 million years old, and that the 44 to 47 million-year glauconite dates are unreliable.  It was published online in 2025 as an early view, and the article takes its dinocyst dating as the best available age for the amber.

1. 14a.

   Section abstract, page 1:  “dinoflagellate cyst biostratigraphy is the best method for dating the amber-bearing beds. ... The Prussian Formation is late Eocene (Priabonian) in age, 37.7–34 million years old, and the Upper Blue Earth Member is mid-Priabonian, 36–35 million years old.” ↩ ↩

2. 14b.

   Page 4:  “this method of dating can be unreliable because if the glauconite is thermally altered it can produce younger results (Obradovich 1988).  Conversely, glauconite can also be reworked or, if it is contaminated with non-glauconised mica/illite, then older results are produced (Clauer et al. 2005). ... Given that there have only been two studies to date the amber-bearing beds using this method, which provided widely different results from each other, and given that these results have not been replicated by other labs, then they can only be considered as unreliable.”  Page 12:  Ritzkowski's Lutetian age.  “has to be regarded as unreliable.” ↩

3. 14c.

   Page 12:  “during the Quaternary, at times when the sea level was lower ..., amber from the Lower Blue Earth and the base of the Sambian Formation could have been washed out and reworked into Quaternary deposits”.  “it is more likely that the amber found today on eastern Polish beaches is reworked and came from Quaternary coastal or nearshore sediments that have undergone successive episodes of erosion, redeposition and longshore transport during the late Quaternary and Holocene.”  The Upper Blue Earth today lies 6.6 to 12.1 m below sea level, within storm wave base. ↩

Chang, Su-Chin et al.  “Dating Amber: Review and Perspective.”  Minerals 13(7):948.  2023.  A review of how amber deposits are dated, with two case studies of its own that use argon-argon and uranium-lead dating on amber localities in China.  Its abstract says that amber cannot be dated directly, so most deposit ages rest on correlation with other rocks or on index fossils, which carry significant uncertainty.  The article uses it for the point that the Baltic age is still unsettled.

1. 15a.

   Chang et al. 2023 cite Shi et al. 2012 only in passing (their ref. 108) and do not print the figure.  Yu et al. 2019 (p. 11349) give it as.  “a maximum age of 98.8 ± 0.6 Ma”.

2. 15b.

   Page 12:  “the exact age of the well-known and well-documented Baltic amber remains to be determined ... Datable rocks do not occur in stratigraphic proximity to the amber;  different authors estimate that it formed 35–47 million years ago.” ↩ ↩

Grimaldi, David et al.  “Electron microscopic studies of mummified tissues in amber fossils.”  American Museum Novitates 3097:1–31.  1994.  A museum paper that used scanning and transmission electron microscopes on 16 insects and 4 plants from Dominican amber (25 to 30 million years old) and Baltic amber (about 40 million years old).  The authors report that the Dominican insects kept their soft tissues more consistently than the Baltic ones; the first author was then an associate curator in the entomology department of the American Museum of Natural History.  The article uses it for the soft tissues that survive in amber and for the 1994 prediction that amber would preserve DNA.

1. 16a.

   Pages 1–2:  From the abstract:  “Preservation of all soft tissues in Dominican amber insects appears to be more consistent than in Baltic amber insects, several of which were virtually hollow 'casts.'  Membranous structures preserved in the insects include air sacs, uncollapsed tracheae, and various portions of the gut, as well as the brain and bundles of muscle fibers in their original origins and insertions. ... Although sarcomeres are easily identifiable in native muscle samples, the sarcomeric repeats disappear upon hydration, indicating that the repeated structures are probably composed of inorganic salts deposited on thick filaments during dehydration.  Membranous structures are generally better preserved than proteinaceous ones.  Flight muscle mitochondria are particularly well preserved.” ↩ ↩ ↩

2. 16b.

   Page 2:  “Mode of tissue preservation appears to be a rapid and thorough fixation and dehydration, sufficient for preserving DNA in amber more consistently than any other kind of fossil.”  Page 11:  “There is little doubt that amber will preserve DNA more consistently than any other kind of fossil.” ↩ ↩

McCoy, Victoria E. et al.  “Ancient amino acids from fossil feathers in amber.”  Scientific Reports 9:6420.  2019.  A laboratory study that heated modern chicken feathers in modern resin to measure how fast their protein breaks down, then tested nine fossil feathers in amber, 44 to 105 million years old, for amino acids, the building blocks of protein.  Seven gave none and two gave very low amounts, and the authors use racemisation, the slow flip of amino acids between left-handed and right-handed forms, to say that some of the survivors are ancient.  The article uses it as the direct measurement of protein in amber feathers.

1. 17a.

   Page 4:  “We also investigated nine fossil specimens (ranging from 44 Ma to 105 Ma in age ...).  In seven cases, we could not detect amino acids, suggesting that in these samples all the protein had degraded.  Two samples, one each from Eocene (~44 Ma) Baltic amber ... and Cenomanian (~99 Ma) Burmese amber ..., had detectable amino acids.”  Page 1:  In the abstract:  “concentrations are very low, suggesting that much of the original protein has been degraded and lost.  High levels of racemisation in more apolar, slowly racemising amino acids suggest that some of the amino acids were ancient.” ↩ ↩

2. 17b.

   Page 5:  “The Burmese amber sample shows less racemisation than the Baltic amber sample ..., which is unexpected given that Burmese amber (~99 Ma) is approximately twice as old as Baltic amber (~44 Ma).  This could be explained by some contamina[tion]”.  The authors add a second explanation, that each inclusion forms an independent closed system. ↩

Grimaldi, David, and Michael S. Engel.  Evolution of the Insects.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  2005.  Chapter 2.  A book on the evolution of insects, from which the article cites chapter 2, pages 57 to 61.  The article uses it for the behaviour of insects caught in resin and for David Grimaldi's 2005 statement that DNA is highly unlikely to survive in ancient fossils.

1. 18a.

   Pages 57–58:  “A cecidomyiid gall midge caught in Dominican amber while laying its eggs.  Some insects reflexively exude eggs as they are dying, which probably happened here.  Minute scenes like this are commonly preserved in amber.”  “Many of the insects in amber died on the surface of a resin flow and then were sealed when more resin flowed over them.”  “A small swarm of 11 Proplebeia stingless bees in Dominican amber.  They were captured in a fresh runnel of the resin, which was then engulfed by successive flows that formed layers like a stalactite.” ↩ ↩

2. 18b.

   Page 61:  “The most convincing test for the authenticity of the ancient DNA is reproducibility.  Two independent attempts failed to replicate the extraction of DNA from Proplebeia bees in Dominican amber (Austin et al., 1997;  Walden and Robertson, 1997).  Even attempts to extract DNA from other kinds of insects in fossil resins failed ... In fact, these attempts consistently found contaminant DNA.”  Of the 1993 weevil:  “Reanalysis of the published sequences from that specimen, though, indicates that they are probably contaminants from another beetle (Gutiérrez and Marin, 1998).”  “If a molecule as durable as chitin is completely degraded in amber, it is highly likely that DNA will also be degraded.  In fact, it is highly unlikely that any DNA is preserved in ancient fossils of any sort.” ↩ ↩ ↩

3. 18c.

   Page 61:  “the cuticles from Proplebeia bees in Dominican amber contain no trace of chitin or protein (Stankiewicz et al., 1998c).” ↩ ↩

Henwood, Alison.  “Exceptional preservation of dipteran flight muscle and the taphonomy of insects in amber.”  Palaios 7(2):203–212.  1992.  A laboratory experiment with live blowflies (Calliphora vomitoria) that compared four treatments: dried, sealed in wax, left in vials of maple syrup, and left untreated as a control.  The flight muscle of each group was examined under the electron microscope and compared with flies from Dominican amber.  The sealed flies decayed fastest and the dried flies resembled the amber fossil, so the article uses it to show that amber keeps soft tissue mainly by drying the insect rather than by cutting off its oxygen.

1. 19a.

   Page 211:  “The extraordinary soft part preservation of insects fossilized in amber is not a direct product of their hermetically sealed tombs as has been suggested, since flies embedded in air- and water-impermeable wax show a faster rate and greater extent of decay than the control flies.”  “anoxia is shown to be ineffective in promoting special preservation and anoxic disintegration is shown to proceed very fast even without external bacterial contamination.” ↩ ↩

2. 19b.

   Page 203:  In the abstract, the dehydrated flies' preservational style.  “shows considerable similarity to that of fossil amber.”  Page 210:  The syrup flies.  “are dehydrated by osmotic water movement from their tissues to the hyperosmotic maple syrup surrounding them.”  Page 208:  The untreated controls:  “Twelve hours after death the regular hexagonal lattice of thick and thin myofilaments was in disarray.” ↩

3. 19c.

   Page 203:  In the abstract:  “The ultrastructural preservation of the tissue in amber is inferred to be at least partly due to water loss and not the result of anoxic conditions.”  The experiment constrains how fast preservation must begin, not how long the deposit has existed; the author uses the standard mid-Tertiary age for Dominican amber throughout. ↩

Austin, Jeremy J. et al.  “Problems of reproducibility – does geologically ancient DNA survive in amber-preserved insects?”  Proceedings of the Royal Society B 264:467–474.  1997.  A laboratory study that tried to repeat earlier claims of DNA from insects in amber, using the stingless bee Proplebeia dominicana from Dominican amber and other bees and flies from amber and copal, with five ways of extracting DNA.  The authors came from the Natural History Museum in London, and none of the earlier sequences could be reproduced.  The article uses it as the failed attempt to repeat those claims.

1. 20a.

   Page 467:  The summary, which the article quotes.  Page 473:  “In the absence of any independent replication of DNA sequences from amber-preserved insects we have to conclude that previous studies have been misled either by minute amounts of contaminating DNA or by the vagaries of molecular biological techniques acting on extremely small quantities of damaged DNA.”  “Although no negative result can disprove the existence of ancient DNA in amber-preserved fossils, our work shows that isolation of geologically ancient DNA from amber-preserved insects is not reproducible.” ↩ ↩

Penney, David et al.  “Absence of ancient DNA in sub-fossil insect inclusions preserved in 'Anthropocene' Colombian copal.”  PLoS ONE 8(9):e73150.  2013.  A laboratory study that sequenced DNA from two stingless bees in Colombian copal, a young resin, one 'post-Bomb' (under 60 years old) and one about 10,612 years old, using a high-throughput sequencer.  The older bee's reads all looked like artefacts, and the younger bee's few significant matches were to bacteria and other organisms, not stingless bees, so the authors conclude that DNA is not preserved in copal.  The article uses it for the 2013 result that a bee in copal under 60 years old had no DNA, and for the radiocarbon dates of young copal.

1. 21a.

   Page 1:  In the abstract:  “All of the reads from the older specimen appeared to be artefacts.  We were therefore unable to obtain any convincing evidence for the preservation of ancient DNA in either of the two copal inclusions that we studied, and conclude that DNA is not preserved in this type of material.  Our results raise further doubts about claims of DNA extraction from fossil insects in amber, many millions of year[s] older than copal.”  Page 5:  “DNA survival in resin inclusions is no better, and perhaps worse, than that in air-dried museum insects.” ↩ ↩

2. 21b.

   Page 2:  “The specimens were two stingless bees (Apidae:  Meliponini:  Trigonisca ameliae) in 'Anthropocene' Colombian copal ... dated to 'post-Bomb' (<60 years in age) and 10,612±62 cal yr BP, respectively (NSF–Arizona AMS Facility).” ↩

Oard, Michael J.  “The Flood origin of amber and insects in amber.”  Creation Ministries International.  Sep 30, 2024.  A magazine article posted on the website of Creation Ministries International, a creationist ministry, and first printed in the magazine Creation 45(3):52–55, 2023.  It proposes that amber and the insects in it formed from resin that flowed onto floating mats of logs during Noah's Flood.  The article uses it as the one worked-out creationist account of how amber formed.

1. 22a.

   “Thick and widespread log mats floating on the waters of Noah's Flood can explain the origin of amber, how it is found, and the creatures in it.  Resin bleeds from trees because of trauma or damage, which would be expected in the Flood as logs were ripped up in huge numbers and bounced around in the turbulent water.  Numerous organisms attempting to survive the Flood would find refuge on log mats.  The organisms would sometimes become trapped in this copious flow of resin.”  “Amber is commonly found within coal or closely associated with it, mainly the low-rank coal called lignite or brown coal.  This suggests that the resin requires some amount of heat and pressure to transform it to amber. ... Therefore, the origin of amber is likely similar to that of coal.”  “All known amber-bearing beds are or have been associated with marine deposits, indicating an inundation with salt water at some time in their past.” ↩ ↩

2. 22b.

   “The main source of Baltic amber is a thin layer of sedimentary rock on a Swedish peninsula in the Baltic Sea, some 40 km (25 miles) long”.  “The amount of amber mined from the deposit so far is a staggering half a million kilograms (over one million pounds)”.  “Based on chemical signatures, scientists think Baltic amber originated from the resin of the Kauri pine (genus Agathis).”  Samland is in Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia; 544,320 kg was the 1895 production alone (Langenheim p. 275); Wolfe et al. 2009 reject Araucariaceae on FTIR evidence. ↩ ↩ ↩

3. 22c.

   “It was even claimed that bacteria from the abdominal contents of an extinct bee preserved in Dominican amber were revived.” ↩ ↩

4. 22d.

   “One of the more interesting fossils found in amber is a tiny gecko foot with modern-looking toe pads that was discovered in an amber mine in Myanmar.  A well-preserved whole gecko has been found in Baltic amber.  The unique toe pads show little or no change from geckos that live today.”  The Burmese specimen is Cretaceogekko, an extinct genus. ↩

Sherwin, Frank.  “Amber: a window to the recent past.”  Institute for Creation Research.  2006.  A popular article in the Institute for Creation Research's magazine Acts & Facts (volume 35, issue 7), written by Frank Sherwin, a zoologist who gives seminars for ICR.  It says that amber preserves DNA fragments and presents this as a problem for dating amber by millions of years.  The article uses it as the 2006 ICR page that still claimed amber preserved DNA, nine years after the replication failure.

1. 23a.

   “There have even been discoveries of preserved animal and plant DNA, 'Amber has preserved ancient life to such infinitesimal detail that it even captures fragments of DNA of the organisms entrapped in it.'  The discovery of DNA segments is not surprising for the creationist.  However, it stupefies the Darwinist, because evolutionists maintain that amber is many millions of years old.” ↩ ↩

Girard, Vincent et al.  “Evidence for marine microfossils from amber.”  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105(45):17426–17429.  2008.  A research paper by a team of palaeontologists from French and German institutions.  They found marine microfossils, including diatoms, radiolarians, sponge spicules, a foraminifer and a sea-urchin larval spine, in about 100-million-year-old amber from two quarries in southwestern France.  The authors argue that the amber forests grew on the coast and that marine remains reached the resin by wind, spray or high tide.  The article uses it for that explanation, which the authors offer as their reading of how the marine pieces got into the resin.

1. 24a.

   Page 17426:  The amber-preserved diatom genera are typical taxa of marine nearshore shallow waters, which means shallow sea water close to shore.  The words are on the paper's opening page, where the abstract also is.  “typical taxa of marine nearshore shallow”. ↩

2. 24b.

   Page 17428:  “the French Cretaceous amber forests were clearly very close to the seashore as also indicated by syninclusions of mangrove bugs whose modern representatives forage on forest floors during low tides.  Also, teeth of sharks that are typical for mangroves occur in the amber-bearing layer.”  “Because the inclusions occur in layers of successive resin flows within a single piece of amber, we assume that the introduction of marine debris to the forest was a continuous process, rather than a single event.  Because most marine microfossils are attached to tiny pieces of organic debris, it is likely that dried, marine organic matter with siliceous microfossil remnants was blown from the beach into the nearby woods.” ↩ ↩

Xing, Lida et al.  “A gigantic marine ostracod (Crustacea: Myodocopa) trapped in mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber.”  Scientific Reports 8:1365.  2018.  A description of one 12.9-millimetre marine ostracod, a small crustacean with a two-part shell, found in a single piece of mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber.  The paper reports the first ostracod of any kind from Cretaceous amber, and it rests on one specimen.  The article uses it for the authors' reading of how the valve got into the resin: caught at the water's edge, dried in air, then covered by forest litter.

1. 25a.

   Page 1:  The abstract describes a 12.9 mm valve of.  “an exclusively marine group”.  “a moulted exuvium or a dead and disarticulated specimen, and subsequent resin flows contain forest”.  Page 7:  “Between these two flows there is a prominent drying line ... Tears and cracks within the dark surface of the drying line indicate that the resin had oxidized and partially polymerized before a secondary flow containing insect frass and a large amount of fine particulate matter was added ... This suggests a scenario in which resin was released underwater or at the water's edge, encapsulating the ostracod, then the resin mass dried subaerially for a significant length of time before a subsequent resin flow captured a range" of forest debris.”  The amber "is found in laminated coals interspersed among fine clastic rocks thought to be the product of subtidal deposition in a bay, lagoon, or estuary." ↩ ↩

Smith, R. D. A., and A. J. Ross.  “Amberground pholadid bivalve borings and inclusions in Burmese amber: implications for proximity of resin-producing forests to brackish waters, and the age of the amber.”  Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 107(2–3):239–247.  2018.  A paper on boring clams of the family Pholadidae and the club-shaped structures they made in Burmese amber.  The authors show that the structures are boring crypts, not fungi, and the abstract suggests that small clams died within 1–2 weeks of settling on the resin, while larger ones bored into resin that had already hardened.  The article uses it for both halves of that finding.

1. 26a.

   “Clavate (club-shaped) structures rimming mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber from Myanmar, previously misdiagnosed as fungal sporocarps, are shown to be domichnia (crypts) of martesiine bivalves (Pholadidae:  Martesiinae) ... Cross-cutting relationships between the clavate features and inclusions in the amber demonstrate that the features post-date hardening of the resin.  The fills of the crypts are variable, including sand grade sediment of very fine to coarse sand grainsize, and sparry calcite cements ... Comparison of the size of pholadid body fossils with growth rates of modern equivalents allows the duration of boring activities to be estimated and suggests that small fossil pholadids in Burmese amber became trapped and died within 1–2 weeks of having settled on the resin.  Larger examples present within well-formed domichnia formed in hardened resin.” ↩ ↩ ↩

Robinson, Phil.  “Ammonite in amber.”  Creation 42(2):44–45.  2020.  A magazine article in Creation on an ammonite found in amber.  It was printed in 2020 and put on the web in 2021.  The article uses it for the admission that the ammonite was empty and lifeless before it was trapped, and for the Flood explanation that follows.

1. 27a.

   “The ammonite's outer shell had broken away, and the inner shell was empty, containing no soft tissue.  There was also sand in the entrance of the shell, as well as in the amber itself.  From the condition of the ammonite, it was lifeless before it was trapped in the tree resin.”  “In the initial stages of the Flood, there would have been a mass of uprooted trees in the water ... they would have released large amounts of tree resin into the water.  This sticky resin would have engulfed small organisms from a diverse range of ecosystems.” ↩ ↩

Labandeira, Conrad C., and J. John Jr. Sepkoski.  “Insect diversity in the fossil record.”  Science 261(5119):310–315.  1993.  A review of fossil insects by two researchers, one at the National Museum of Natural History and one at the University of Chicago.  They compiled the geologic ranges of 1,263 insect families from 472 literature sources and compared insects with the land vertebrates called tetrapods.  Insects had low extinction rates, and Tertiary insect faunas were made almost entirely of living families.  The article uses it for the family level, where the paper finds low extinction rates.

1. 28a.

   Page 310:  The abstract says:  “Compilation of the geochronologic ranges of insect families demonstrates that their diversity exceeds that of preserved vertebrate tetrapods through 91 percent of their evolutionary history.  The great diversity of insects was achieved not by high origination rates but rather by low extinction rates comparable to the low rates of slowly evolving marine invertebrate groups.”  Page 311:  “nearly half of all known families are still extant.” ↩

2. 28b.

   Page 311:  Cretaceous and Tertiary insect assemblages consist.  “almost exclusively of living families.”  Page 312:  “This pattern contrasts dramatically with that of the tetrapods, in which fewer than 20% of extant families are present in faunas 100 million years ago and fewer than 10% are present at the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary ... Slightly more than half of marine bivalve families from the Early Triassic are still extant, but fewer than 10% of insect families are.” ↩ ↩

Ross, Andrew J.  “Complete checklist of Burmese (Myanmar) amber taxa 2023.”  Mesozoic 1(1):21–57.  2024.  A checklist, by Andrew J. Ross of the National Museum of Scotland, of every group of organisms recorded from Burmese amber up to the end of 2023.  It merges earlier checklists, corrects their totals, and counts 2,805 species, 2,061 of them insects.  The article uses it for the number of named species and families in the amber, and for which of them are extinct.

1. 29a.

   Page 21:  “A total of 2,805 species have been described or recorded from Cretaceous amber of Myanmar.”  “The checklist of taxa in Kachin amber comprises 50 classes (or similar rank), 133 orders (or similar rank), 726 families, 1,757 genera and 2,770 species (excluding trace fossils and marine encrusters).”  Section Appendix 1:  The appendix header for the insects reads:  “HEXAPODA (2 classes, 32 orders, 488 families, 1362 genera, 2061 species).” ↩ ↩

2. 29b.

   Section Appendix 1, Hexapoda block:  This count was made for the article.  It tallies family entries ending in "-idae" with and without the extinction dagger: 155 marked extinct, 332 not, of 487 entries (Ross prints 488 families).  It is a regular-expression count, not a figure Ross prints.  Order-level names carrying the dagger are †Aethiocarenodea and †Alienoptera (within Dictyoptera), †Lophioneurida (1 family, 1 genus, 1 species), †Permopsocida (1 family, 3 genera, 3 species) and †Tarachoptera (1 family, 3 genera, 13 species).  Ross daggers families and orders, not genera or species;  all 2,061 species are Cretaceous fossils described from amber. ↩

Dunlop, Jason A. et al.  “Computed tomography recovers data from historical amber: an example from huntsman spiders.”  Naturwissenschaften 98:519–527.  2011.  A paper that scanned the original 1854 specimens of a huntsman spider, which are in old, darkened amber, with X-ray computed tomography.  The article uses it to show that the historical name was confirmed by the scan, and that the species is a fossil.

1. 30a.

   The abstract says:  “The original specimens of Ocypete crassipes Koch and Berendt 1854 are in dark, oxidised amber ... phase contrast enhanced X-ray CT revealed exquisite morphological detail and thus 'saved' this historical name by revealing characters which confirm that it's a bona fide member both of Sparassidae and the subfamily Eusparassinae."”  The species is a fossil species described from Baltic amber in 1854. ↩ ↩

Cerling, Thure E.  “Does the gas content of amber reveal the composition of palaeoatmospheres?”  Nature 339:695–696.  1989.  A short paper in Nature that reports crushing experiments on Baltic and Cretaceous amber.  The article cites it for the finding that Cretaceous amber holds less oxygen than air-equilibrated resin would.

1. 31a.

   “Crushing experiments do not indicate high oxygen levels in Cretaceous amber as have been recently reported.  Neither Baltic nor Cretaceous amber has even the amount of oxygen expected for equilibration with the modern atmosphere.  Successive crushings of individual amber pieces show that the first crush has the highest oxygen content and that both bubble and matrix oxygen is consumed as crushing continues.  These results suggest that the oxygen content of amber does not have a bearing on the composition of the palaeoatmosphere.” ↩ ↩

Vávra, Norbert.  “The Chemistry of Amber – Facts, Findings and Opinions.”  Annalen des Naturhistorischen Museums in Wien, Serie A 111:445–474.  2009.  A review of amber chemistry by a palaeontologist at the University of Vienna, written to give earth scientists a readable summary of work they may not be able to reach.  The article uses it for the point that copal and amber cannot be told apart by age, and for the chemical sign of maturity, the loss of exomethylene groups.

1. 32a.

   Page 447:  “Following Poinar (1992) resins may preserve the qualities characterizing copal as long as 3 or 4 millions of years even.  Any hope to define 'copal' and 'amber' on the basis of the geological age must remain problematical therefore.  The most useful criteria to judge whether some fossilized resin is copal or amber are obviously offered by physical characteristics like solubility, hardness and melting point.” ↩

2. 32b.

   Page 452:  “An apparent effect of diagenesis ('maturation') on the structure of Class I resinites is the loss of exomethylene groups by means of isomerization.  This structure can be easily detected by means of spectroscopical methods (infrared spectroscopy and/or ¹³C-NMR).”  Rumanite is shown "to be thermally altered succinite (Stout et al. 2000)." ↩ ↩

Poinar, George O. Jr.  Life in Amber.  Stanford: Stanford University Press.  1992.  A book about amber.  The article calls it Poinar's standard monograph and uses it for two claims: that resin stays copal for 3 to 4 million years before it becomes amber, and for a mining figure the article calls a thousand-fold error.

1. 33a.

   Page 6:  “In the present work, copal is defined as recently deposited resin that can be distinguished from amber by its physical properties.  In this definition, 'recently deposited' extends from when resin hardens and cannot be molded by hand (if moldable, it is still resin) up until 3 to 4 million years, by which time, and under the right conditions, it acquires the unyielding properties of amber.” ↩

2. 33b.

   Page 29:  “Over 100 thousand metric tons of fossilized Kauri resin was removed from New Zealand soil between 1853 and 1970 (Reed, 1972) and it has been estimated that resin production by Agathis australis in the worked areas continued for only thousands, not millions, of years.  Thus, it is conceivable and probable that the observed amounts of amber could have come from a succession of normal, healthy trees over a long time.” ↩

3. 33c.

   Page 2:  “each year between 1875 and 1914 the factory produced between 225,000 and 500,000 tons of raw amber.”  Langenheim's figures from the mining records (204,120 kg in 1875; 544,320 kg in 1895) show this to be a thousand-fold error; any source quoting hundreds of thousands of tons a year has copied it. ↩

Zheng, Ting et al.  “Spectroscopic Identification of Amber Imitations: Different Pressure and Temperature Treatments of Copal Resins.”  Crystals 11(10):1223.  2021.  A laboratory study by researchers at a national gemstone-testing laboratory in Beijing and an amber museum in Shenzhen.  They heated copal under different temperatures and pressures and compared its infrared spectrum with amber's, and the heated copal came close to amber but kept the bands that set it apart.  The article uses it to answer whether heat can imitate burial, which it says only partly.

1. 34a.

   Section 2.2:  “heating samples at 90 °C for 90 days under ambient pressure;  the latter involved heating at 100 °C, 120 °C, 140 °C, 160 °C or 180 °C for 1 day”.  “two single-stage heat–pressure treatments were undertaken at 140 °C–25 bar and 180 °C–35 bar ..., both lasting 7 days.”  Section 3:  “The characteristic IR absorption bands at 3078, 1642 and 888 cm⁻¹ did not disappear completely, but the overall pattern of the copal spectra closely resembled those of ambers from Dominica and Mexico”.  Section Abstract:  “they can still be distinguished by spectroscopic methods.” ↩

Saitta, Evan T., and Thomas G. Kaye.  “Experimental maturation of pine resin in sediment to investigate the formation of synthetic copal and amber.”  Scientific Reports 15:7627.  2025.  An experiment by two researchers, one at the Field Museum in Chicago and one at a science foundation in Arizona.  They heated fresh pine resin in bentonite, a clay, at about 130 to 140 °C under 159 to 241 bar for 19 to 23 hours, and the resin dried and darkened into a brittle, translucent solid whose infrared spectrum was consistent with fossil resins.  The article uses it as a second test of whether heat can do in days what burial does in ages.

1. 35a.

   Table 1:  Fresh Pinus resin in bentonite at.  “~130 °C ... ~159 bar for 22 h”.  “~135 °C for 22.7 h ... ~241 bar”.  “~135–140 °C for 19.05 h”.  The resin.  “dries, possibly hardens, and darkens into a brittle, yellow–orange–brown translucent mass with increased luster, exhibiting flow lines, birefringence, conchoidal fracturing, and air pockets typical of copal/amber”.  “Infrared spectroscopy suggests that matured resins have spectra consistent with those of fossil resins.”  The authors caution that their runs may be.  “producing substances not found in, or at least not currently known from, nature.” ↩

Thomas, Brian.  “Fantastic Australian amber supports young world.”  Institute for Creation Research.  2010.  A short web article from the Institute for Creation Research, a creationist ministry, about Australian amber.  Its title says the amber supports a young world.  The article quotes it for the claim that the amber hardened rapidly and recently, and accepts only the first half of that claim.

1. 36a.

   “If it took very long for the resin to harden, then the insects would probably not have been preserved, since over time they would have worked themselves free, been scavenged, or died and decayed. ... The quality preservation of whole insect bodies testifies to an amber-hardening process that occurred rapidly and recently.”  The same article says "many ambers found in California have still-living microbes in them", citing Cano & Borucki 1995, which concerned Dominican amber. ↩

Weitschat, Wolfgang, and Wilfried Wichard.  “Baltic amber.”  Biodiversity of Fossils in Amber from the Major World Deposits, 80–115.  Siri Scientific Press.  Edited by David Penney.  2010.  A chapter (chapter 6) on Baltic amber in an edited book about amber fossils from the world's main deposits.  It describes the Blue Earth, the layer that holds most Baltic amber, and the strip mine that works it, giving the layer's thickness, its amber content and an estimated reserve of 640,000 metric tons.  The article uses the reserve figure, which is the number usually quoted for the Blue Earth, and the statement that several hundred metric tons of amber are mined every year.

1. 37a.

   Page 84:  “The AG Russian Amber company currently operates one large strip mine (Figure 1), from which several hundred metric tons of amber are extracted every year.  The estimated amber reserves in this area amount to 640,000 metric tons, or many times the quantity already extracted.”  “The thickness of the 'blue earth' layer in the Samland Peninsula varies from 2-10m with an average amber content of roughly 2.5kg per cubic metre”.  The Blue Earth.  “was previously referred to as the amber formation or 'glauconite formation.'” ↩

García-Méijome, Alberto et al.  “Resin-tapping production in Pinus pinaster Ait. stands in Galicia (NW Spain).”  Forests 14(1):128.  2023.  A field trial in maritime pine (Pinus pinaster) stands in northwest Spain, where trees were tapped for resin in each of the three years before they were felled, at two sites, with one or two faces tapped and two wound widths.  It found that tapping two faces gave more resin than tapping one, and that location and each year's weather affected the yield.  The article uses its per-tree yields as the figure for how much a tapped pine gives.

1. 38a.

   Page 7:  Mean resin production was 3.6 and 3.3 kg per tree in the two sites.  Page 5:  The page gives values.  “for other regions, which range from 3.2–3.5 kg per tree.”  These are wounded, repeatedly re-cut trees, so natural unwounded exudation, which is lower, is not measured in any of the sources this article uses. ↩

Grimaldi, David A. et al.  “Fossiliferous Cretaceous amber from Myanmar (Burma): its rediscovery, biotic diversity, and paleontological significance.”  American Museum Novitates 3361:1–71.  2002.  A monograph in the American Museum Novitates series on a newly excavated collection of Burmese amber, holding some 3,100 organisms from the American Museum of Natural History.  It names new plants, animals and insects, and reviews the Mesozoic (the age of the dinosaurs) arthropods in the amber to put its probable age at 90–100 million years.  The article uses it to show that the amber's arthropods are exclusively Mesozoic, although the amber was found in younger rock.

1. 39a.

   Page 4:  Noetling.  “perceptively noticed that the newly excavated amber pieces appeared weathered and may have been transported some distance before redeposition”.  Chhibber.  “reported the amber to occur in thin lignite seams among clays and shales ... Presence of the foraminiferan Nummulites biarritzensis indicated a middle Eocene age of the sediments, though Chhibber acknowledged that the amber was possibly reworked from older sediments”.  Cockerell (1917) wrote:  “it is difficult to avoid a strong suspicion that the amber, though found in Miocene clay, is actually very much older, conceivably even Upper Cretaceous.” ↩

2. 39b.

   Section abstract, page 3:  “The stratigraphic distribution of exclusively Mesozoic arthropods in Burmese amber is reviewed, which indicates a probable Turonian-Cenomanian age of this material (90-100 Ma).” ↩

Iturralde-Vinent, Manuel A.  “Geology of the amber-bearing deposits of the Greater Antilles.”  Caribbean Journal of Science 37(3–4):141–167.  2001.  A review of the rocks that hold amber and lignite (a soft brown coal) across the Greater Antilles, based on five years of the author's own research.  It dates one rock unit, the Yanigua Formation, from microfossils in the author's own samples, and it explains the large Dominican deposits by a warm, wet climate optimum.  The article uses it for the age of the Dominican deposits and for the author's plain statement that amber forms over several millions of years.

1. 40a.

   Page 148:  The Yanigua Formation, a named rock unit, is dated from foraminifera, ostracods and nannoplankton in the author's own samples (Table 1, p. 146).  The author writes that it.  “can be dated as late Early to early Middle Miocene (Miogypsina-Soritiidae zone of Iturralde-Vinent (1969)), or slightly younger, about 15 to 20 million years old according to the scale of Berggren et al. (1995)”.  Page 143:  “Under these conditions and several millions of years, copal is naturally cooked and transformed into amber.”  Page 141:  In the abstract, the climate optimum is dated.  “about 16 m.y. ago.” ↩

Poinar, George Jr.  “Palaeoecological perspectives in Dominican amber.”  Annales de la Société Entomologique de France (n.s.) 46(1–2):23–52.  2010.  A review of the insects and other animals trapped in Dominican amber, by a zoologist at Oregon State University, covering their habits and their links with plants and vertebrates.  It surveys the earlier age estimates for the amber, and those estimates disagree with one another.  The article uses it to show that the ages given for Dominican amber do not agree.

1. 41a.

   Pages 23–24:  Grimaldi 1996 gave 23 to 30 Ma (millions of years ago); Iturralde-Vinent & MacPhee 1996 gave 15 to 20 Ma from foraminifera; Cepek's coccoliths gave 30 to 45 Ma for La Toca and 25 to 30 for Palo Alto; the Lambert et al. 1985 NMR estimate was 30 to 40 Ma.  “There is clearly a discrepancy between the ages reported by the above authors.” ↩

Xing, Lida et al.  “A feathered dinosaur tail with primitive plumage trapped in mid-Cretaceous amber.”  Current Biology 26(24):3352–3360.  2016.  A research report in Current Biology describing the tail of a feathered dinosaur, about 99 million years old, preserved in amber from Kachin State, Myanmar.  The authors describe its plumage and the soft tissues inside it.  The article cites it for the authors' own statement that the detail of the tissues was lost.

1. 42a.

   “Beneath the feathers, carbonized soft tissues offer a glimpse of preservational potential and history for the inclusion;  abundant Fe²⁺ suggests vestiges of primary haemoglobin and ferritin remain trapped within the tail.”  “drying and resin impregnation were not sufficient to preserve cellular detail in the soft tissues.” ↩

Cano, R. J. et al.  “Amplification and sequencing of DNA from a 120–135-million-year-old weevil.”  Nature 363:536–538.  1993.  A short paper in the journal Nature that reports DNA extracted from a weevil in Lebanese amber, which the authors date to 120 to 135 million years ago, and amplified by PCR.  The article uses it as the 1993 weevil claim that later reanalysis put down to contamination.

1. 43a.

   Abstract:  “We report here the extraction of DNA from a 120-135-million-year-old weevil (Nemonychidae, Coleoptera) found in Lebanese amber, PCR amplification of segments of the 18S rRNA gene and the internal transcribed spacer ... This represents the oldest fossil DNA ever extracted and sequenced.”  Grimaldi & Engel 2005 (p. 60–61) note that publication.  “on the same day that the film version of Jurassic Park publicly debuted (10 June 1993) was not coincidental.” ↩

Willerslev, Eske, and Alan Cooper.  “Ancient DNA.”  Proceedings of the Royal Society B 272:3–16.  2005.  A review by two Oxford ancient-DNA researchers of how the field went wrong and how it now checks its results.  It says that early reports of very old DNA from amber and other fossils were disproved or ignored, and that many were never repeated by other labs.  The article uses it for the field's own verdict that the 1995 bacterial-spore claim from amber was never checked.

1. 44a.

   Page 12:  “nearly all of the geologically ancient microbial claims have not been checked by either the analysis of DNA preservation states, or more disconcertingly, by independent replication.  For example, reports of bacterial DNA and viable cells surviving for hundreds of millions of years in halite were published in Nature (Vreeland et al. 2000;  Fish et al. 2002) without verification of the result by real-time PCR, DNA damage data or independent replication.  Several papers have commented on the exceptional similarity of these microbial DNA sequences to contemporary ones.”  The amber claim is Cano & Borucki 1995, Science 268:1060. ↩

Garner, Paul.  “Fossil DNA in amber and implications for geological time.”  Biblical Creation Society.  2002.  A short popular web page from the Biblical Creation Society, a creationist group.  It was first written about 1993, and it argues that DNA breaks down within tens of thousands of years at most, so the amber DNA reports conflict with millions of years and fit young-earth models.  The article cites it as an early creationist hedge that the amber DNA results might be contamination.

1. 45a.

   “contamination by modern DNA”.  “whether or not the earlier results can be reproduced”.  The page closes by noting that the residues may have been contamination, and that later work must decide whether the earlier results can be reproduced.  The reproduction was attempted in 1997 and 2013 and failed;  the page has not been updated. ↩

Clarey, Tim.  “Mind-blowing marine ammonite in tree resin.”  Institute for Creation Research.  2019.  A popular article by Tim Clarey, a geologist with a doctorate who is a research associate at ICR, on the Burmese ammonite that Yu and colleagues published in PNAS in 2019.  It describes the ammonite as a marine shell found in amber with land animals, and it offers the Flood as the explanation.  The article uses it as ICR's own Flood account of where the ammonite's amber came from.

1. 46a.

   “This environmental mixing is just what one would expect in a global Flood, with tsunami-like waves carrying sea creatures far inland, mixing and burying them with land creatures.”  “Why they preferred the latter and least probable explanation is a testament to their uniformitarian worldview—they appear to be unable to think outside of it.  The more likely explanations, involving large storms and tsunamis seem far more probable.” ↩ ↩

Schmidt, Alexander R., and David L. Dilcher.  “Aquatic organisms as amber inclusions and examples from a modern swamp forest.”  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104(42):16581–16585.  2007.  A field study in a Florida swamp forest.  The authors made pine trees that stand in swamp water release resin artificially, then examined what the resin caught.  Insects and all the main groups of tiny freshwater organisms were caught, and resin flowing into water could also trap drops of water with their organisms inside.  The article uses it because living swamp trees trap aquatic organisms in resin today, which shows that no catastrophe is needed.

1. 47a.

   Page 16581:  From the abstract.  “Different aquatic arthropods and all major groups of limnetic microorganisms were found embedded in resin that had contact with swamp water ... water with aquatic organisms become enclosed in resin while it is flowing in an aquatic environment ... In contact with air, even resin that had initially been flowing into water may solidify.”  “none of the four theories mentioned above is necessary to get aquatic organisms entrapped in amber.” ↩

Thomas, Brian.  “Scan of amber-trapped spider shows recent origin.”  Institute for Creation Research.  2011.  An ICR article by Brian Thomas, a science writer at ICR, on a CT scan of a Baltic amber huntsman spider first described in 1854.  He argues that the spider looks unchanged from modern species, and that oxygen darkening of the amber casts doubt on its age of 49 million years.  The article uses it as ICR's flagship example, which fails on its own citation.

1. 48a.

   “the high-resolution details of the outer surface of this specimen were sufficient to easily identify it as virtually identical to the modern species Eusparassus crassipes.” ↩

2. 48b.

   ICR's "Stunning amber bird wings" (2016):  “Ambers darken over time as they react with oxygen.  After 100 million years, shouldn't they all be completely dark ...?” ↩

Mitchell, Elizabeth.  “Tropical huntsman.”  Answers in Genesis.  2011.  A short News to Note item from Answers in Genesis.  The article uses it for the claim that huntsman spiders have not changed since they were entombed in amber, and that the amber is only a few thousand years old.

1. 49a.

   “Evidently, Huntsman spiders have made no evolutionary progress or even any speciation changes since this one managed to get himself entombed.  He appears as modern as his descendants.  This fact does not surprise us, since we are confident that the amber is no more than a few thousand years old.” ↩

Berner, Robert A., and Gary P. Landis.  “Gas bubbles in fossil amber as possible indicators of the major gas composition of ancient air.”  Science 239:1406–1409.  1988.  A research report on the gas released when fossil amber is broken open.  It found that the primary bubbles in Late Cretaceous amber held more than 30 percent oxygen, against 21 percent for the Eocene–Oligocene and present-day samples.  The article traces its 35% figure to this paper; technical comments and a reply on it run in Science 241:717–724.

1. 50a.

   Abstract, as printed.  “After discounting the possibility that the major gases N₂, O₂, and CO₂ underwent appreciable diffusion and diagenetic exchange with their surroundings or reaction with the amber, it has been concluded that in primary bubbles (gas released during initial breakage) these gases represent mainly original ancient air modified by the aerobic respiration of microorganisms ... original oxygen concentrations ... appear to have changed from greater than 30 percent O₂ during one part of the Late Cretaceous (between 75 and 95 million years ago) to 21 percent during the Eocene-Oligocene and for present-day samples.”  The 35% figure is from a USGS press summary of more than 300 analyses. ↩ ↩

Hopfenberg, Harold B. et al.  “Is the air in amber ancient?”  Science, 717–718.  1988.  A technical comment in Science by two chemical engineers and an entomologist.  They weighed how much propane powdered and flaked Dominican amber absorbed, and how fast.  The diffusion coefficients came out at 8 x 10⁻¹³ and 5 x 10⁻¹³ cm²/s, which they read as gas moving through the amber, so amber cannot trap ancient air in bubbles.  The article cites it for measured propane diffusion in ground Dominican amber.

1. 51a.

   Page 717:  Gravimetric propane sorption on cryo-ground Dominican amber.  “The t½ values are 160 and 15 min for the powder and flakes, respectively.  These very different half-times ... correspond, however, to very similar diffusion coefficients of 8 x 10⁻¹³ and 5 x 10⁻¹³ cm²/s for the powder and flake samples, respectively.”  Page 718:  “our fundamental conclusion that amber cannot trap ancient air would be valid even if our values are in error by many orders of magnitude.” ↩

Horibe, Yoshio, and Harmon Craig.  “Is the air in amber ancient?”  Science, 720–721.  1988.  A technical comment in Science by two researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.  They found that freshly ground amber uses up oxygen, with a mean life of 67 days at room temperature, and that gases in amber are replaced by diffusion from the air.  With a diffusion coefficient for air of about 10⁻¹⁰ cm²/s, they calculated that the air inside a 10-cm ball of amber is about 440 years old.  The article cites it among the technical comments on the 1988 claim.

1. 52a.

   Page 720:  “Figure 1 shows the results obtained with Baltic amber at 107°C:  the reaction is first order with a half-time ... of 1 day for O₂ consumption. ... At 23°C, 0.44 g of amber consumed 3.5 cc at standard temperature and pressure (STP) of O₂ from air during a period of 31 days, with production of only 0.13 cc(STP) of CO₂. ... the mean-life for O₂ exposed to fresh amber at room temperature is about 67 days in our experiments.”  Page 721:  “the diffusion coefficients, on the order of D ~ 10⁻¹⁰ cm²/s, are much too high for the gases in amber to be antiques”.  The closing passage says that gases in amber cannot tell us anything about air older than a few centuries. ↩

Beck, Curt W.  “Is the air in amber ancient?”  Science, 718–719.  1988.  A technical comment in Science by a single author from the Amber Research Laboratory.  It argued that Baltic amber is permeable to liquids and gases, and that the differences between the amber results come from resin chemistry rather than age.  The article cites it among the technical comments on the 1988 claim.

1. 53a.

   Page 719:  “there is considerable evidence that at least some fossil resins, for example Baltic amber, are permeable to liquids and hence also to gases. ... Any inferences about the composition of the earth's atmosphere during the Late Cretaceous and Early Tertiary must be considered premature.”  On the inferred ten-atmosphere bubble pressure:  “This conclusion is the least likely one that can be drawn from this severe discrepancy of volumes.”  The fourth comment, Chave & Smith (pp. 719–720), accepts the >30% figure and discusses K-T wildfires. ↩

Landis, Gary P., and Robert A. Berner.  “Response: Is the air in amber ancient?”  Science, 721–724.  1988.  The reply of the 1988 authors to their critics, which the article cites with the 1988 claim.  They report more than 300 gas analyses on 15 ambers and resins from the Lower Cretaceous to recent time, and say that Cretaceous ambers average 35% O₂ on an O₂ + N₂ basis.  They argue that the gas release they measured reflects adsorption and desorption, not diffusion, so diffusion rates cannot be measured unambiguously.

1. 54a.

   Page 722:  “If our data are interpreted as diffusion, the two experiments give diffusion coefficients different by a factor of 10⁵.  In sum, we feel our results are best explained by adsorption-desorption phenomena and not by volume diffusion.  We conclude that adsorption and desorption of gases, from both amber samples and from the walls of the enclosing vacuum system, preclude unambiguous interpretation of gas uptake and release experiments to measure diffusion rates in amber, both in our work and in that of our critics.” ↩

Genesis Park.  The Pre-Flood Atmosphere.  n.d.  Three popular young-earth web pages.  This one describes a water vapor canopy and an atmosphere richer in oxygen before the Flood.  The other two are creationism.org's "Air bubbles in amber" and Genesis Apologetics' "Pre-Flood world FAQ".  The article cites all three as places where the 35% figure still circulates, without the later rebuttals.

1. 55a.

   Genesis Park, which gives the 1988 result and none of the rebuttals:  “Microscopic air bubbles trapped in fossilized tree resin were analyzed by Robert Berner of Yale and Gary Landis of the U.S. Geological Survey”.  Genesis Apologetics:  “Some secular studies that have investigated air bubbles trapped in amber that was dated to the 'ancient world in which dinosaurs lived,' have found both increased pressure as well as greater oxygen levels.”  creationism.org:  “Consistently, there is a higher percentage of oxygen in these amber”.  followed by the word bubbles. ↩

Creation Ministries International.  Arguments we think creationists should NOT use.  n.d.  A Creation Ministries International page that lists arguments its writers think creationists should not use.  The article cites it for the fact that the 35% oxygen figure is not on that list.

1. 56a.

   The page does not mention amber, oxygen or atmosphere.  It does list the vapour canopy. ↩

Xing, Lida et al.  “Hummingbird-sized dinosaur from the Cretaceous period of Myanmar.”  Nature 579:245–249.  2020.  The 2020 Nature paper that named Oculudentavis khaungraae, a tiny fossil from amber in Myanmar, as a dinosaur.  Its authors retracted it in a Retraction Note in Nature 584:652 (27 August 2020, doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2553-9) because a new specimen cast doubt on its position.  The article cites it as a headline amber claim that was retracted.  Bolet, Arnau, et al., "Unusual morphology in the mid-Cretaceous lizard Oculudentavis", Current Biology 31:3303–3314 (2021), later found the fossil to be a lizard.

1. 57a.

   Original abstract:  “The find appears to represent the smallest known dinosaur of the Mesozoic era.”  Retraction:  “We, the authors, are retracting this Article to prevent inaccurate information from remaining in the literature.  Although the description of Oculudentavis khaungraae remains accurate, a new unpublished specimen casts doubts upon our hypothesis regarding the phylogenetic position of HPG-15-3.”  Bolet et al. 2021 (abstract):  “we describe a more complete specimen that demonstrates Oculudentavis is actually a bizarre lizard of uncertain position.”  Creation Ministries' Robinson 2020 (Creation 42(4):24–27) printed.  “in reality a bird skull has been identified in Myanmar amber”.  three months after the retraction; the web version still carries it. ↩

Robinson, Phil.  “Startling fossils in amber defy long-age dogmas.”  Creation 42(4):24–27.  2020.  A magazine article, printed in 2020 and posted on the web in 2021, that argues a Flood laid down resin in floating forests and explains five amber fossils from Myanmar, the Baltic and Alberta.  The article uses it for Creation Ministries' placement of Baltic amber in the Flood and for its account of how the resin became amber.

1. 58a.

   “All five of these fantastic fossils are much better explained by the global Flood some 4,500 years ago.  At the start of the Flood, forests were ripped up by the turbulent waters.  As the trees travelled together, they would have smashed against one another, releasing large quantities of resin.  As the extremely sticky resin can float in water it would have trapped and encased any small items that were also in the water. ... Large amounts of the resin were then deposited and buried rapidly under huge quantities of sediment, which provided the pressure and heat required for its chemical transformation into amber.”  The five fossils include a Baltic caterpillar, given as.  “The assigned 'age', 44 million years”.  and an Alberta piece dated to the Campanian, so this is an explicit placement of Eocene and Campanian amber in the Flood.  “For the resin to become amber, it first needs to be buried, where it begins to harden and is called copal”.  This is wrong:  copal is surface resin. ↩ ↩

Catchpoole, David.  “'Surprising' lizards in amber.”  Creation 38(2):16–17.  2016.  A magazine article about lizards preserved in amber.  The article uses it for Creation Ministries' placement of the Miocene Dominican anoles in the Flood.

1. 59a.

   On the Dominican anoles the article says:  “the catastrophic global Flood of Noah would have vastly multiplied the amount of resin available for entrapping organisms.  Uprooted trees, smashing against each other in the swirling currents and waves, would have lost their bark and released copious quantities of tree resin”.  “recognizing that sedimentary rock layers and the embedded fossils therein date from the Flood of Noah's day”.  This is an explicit placement of Miocene amber in the Flood, which is post-Flood on every K-Pg model and on Snelling's Oligocene boundary. ↩

Lacey, Troy.  “Recent amber fossil finds.”  Answers in Genesis.  Feb 6, 2019.  A popular article by Troy Lacey on two amber finds: green lacewing larvae from Lebanese amber, conventionally dated to 130 million years, and millipedes from Burmese amber, dated to 99 million years.  It argues that the fossils closely match living relatives.  The article uses it for Answers in Genesis's placement of the Lebanese amber in the late stages of the Flood.

1. 60a.

   “The first fossil discovery we'll discuss came from Lebanon, and the amber (and fossil contents) is conventionally dated at 130 MY. ... Creation scientists would expect to see little change morphologically or behaviorally, since these particular insects are ones that were entombed in the late stages of the Flood only about 4,350 years ago.” ↩

Thomas, Brian.  “Cache of amber in India looks young.”  Institute for Creation Research.  Nov 5, 2010.  A web article by Brian Thomas of the Institute for Creation Research on a large cache of amber from India and the lignite (brown coal) it lies in.  It argues that such deposits need a uniquely catastrophic cause, since they do not form today.  The article uses it for ICR's reading of the Cambay amber-lignite as an after-effect of the Flood.

1. 61a.

   “the massive amounts of amber are associated with a huge deposit of lignite ... Such deposits do not form today, so something uniquely catastrophic must have occurred in the past ... The scale of energy required to form this and similar deposits is certainly consistent with the energy scales implied in the biblical account of the immediate after-effects of the worldwide Flood.”  The claim that such deposits do not form today is false:  resin-bearing peat forms today in kauri swamps and in Hymenaea and Agathis peatlands. ↩

Clarey, Tim.  “European stratigraphy supports a global Flood.”  Institute for Creation Research.  Nov 27, 2019.  A web article by Tim Clarey of the Institute for Creation Research on the rock layers of Europe.  ICR's column project team compiled 499 stratigraphic columns from oil wells, outcrops and seismic data, and reports the same early, peak and receding pattern of flooding that it found on three other continents.  The article uses it to place Europe's marine rock inside the Flood, the Blue Earth included.

1. 62a.

   “The sedimentary rocks across much of central Europe indicate that marine depositional processes continued without interruption from the Cretaceous through the Upper Cenozoic (Figure 5).  Many locations show continuous deposition of carbonate rocks across the K-Pg boundary from the Cretaceous through Miocene.” ↩

Oard, Michael J.  “Marine fossils in amber support the Flood log-mat model.”  Journal of Creation 24(1):9–10.  2010.  A two-page article in the Journal of Creation that argues marine fossils in amber fit the Flood log-mat model, in which resin-producing trees on a beach pick up marine microorganisms blown into the resin.  The article cites it as the only creationist source it found that derives a Flood boundary from amber itself.

1. 63a.

   Page 10:  Footnote 30 of the paper cites Oard 2007, Journal of Creation 21(1):98–110, for the other indicators. ↩

2. 63b.

   Page 9:  On the Schmidt & Dilcher swamp mechanism:  “But of course one 'fly in the ointment' is that the resin needs to be exposed to air in order to solidify.”  On the same page:  “Much amber, including Baltic amber found along the shores of the Baltic Sea, has been re-eroded.  Amber from Alberta was re-eroded and deposited 600 km away in Manitoba.” ↩

Thomas, Brian.  Amber fossils redefine 'Age of Reptiles'.  Institute for Creation Research.  Feb 28, 2014.  A web article by Brian Thomas, a science writer at the Institute for Creation Research, on amber fossils from Burma (present-day Myanmar).  It says that tree bark turned into coal in a single day, and that the resin hardened into amber over weeks to decades.  The article cites it for ICR's own account of how fast amber forms.

1. 64a.

   “With further burial and heating, the tree bark turned into coal—a process that can be duplicated in a single day.  The resin, situated separately but nearby, then hardened into amber—a process requiring weeks to decades, depending on factors like sample thickness, type of resin, and temperature.” ↩

Thomas, Brian.  “Amber jewelry: a conversation piece for creation evidence.”  Acts & Facts 39(9):17.  2010.  A short popular article by Brian Thomas, a science writer at the Institute for Creation Research, arguing that amber is young.  It points to living bacteria and yeast recovered from amber, and to the speed with which resin hardens, as evidence that amber did not take millions of years to form.  The article uses it for ICR's claim that amber-like nodules form from tree resin today.

1. 65a.

   “Nodules that are chemically the same as 'ancient' ambers form today.” ↩

Sherwin, Frank.  “Amber insect fossils still glow.”  Institute for Creation Research.  Aug 31, 2020.  A web article by Frank Sherwin of the Institute for Creation Research on three insects from Myanmar amber, a wasp, a beetle and a fly, whose iridescent colors come from the interference of reflected light on their bodies.  It argues that the colors show design, since evolutionists cannot trace their origin.  The article uses it for the creationist view that the amber formed before the Flood and that its insects survived it.

1. 66a.

   “In the pre-Flood world, animal and plant material was caught in the sticky resin that solidified into amber.  Many of these specimens survived the global Flood that happened around 4,500 years ago.”  Table I:  Miller, Michaels & Miller 2006 give their Baltic and Wyoming ambers the same placement, labelling them.  “pre-flood”. ↩

Catchpoole, David.  “Amber needed water (and lots of it).”  Creation 31(2):20–22.  2009.  A magazine article arguing that amber needs water to form, since resin stays sticky longer under water and so traps more organisms.  It was posted on the web in 2010.  The article uses it for the idea that resin released into the Flood's waters stayed liquid long enough to trap animals.

1. 67a.

   “Water delays the process of solidification and 'amberisation' that is normally driven by oxygen in air.  Thus the resin stays stickier for longer under water, and is more likely to trap insects and other organisms.”  Note 9 of the same article concedes that amber.  “floats in saltwater but sinks in freshwater”.  The article also claims that beaches are.  “where the vast majority of amber fossils have been found”.  which is false for every mined deposit including the Samland Blue Earth. ↩

Whitmore, John H., and Kurt P. Wise.  “Rapid and early post-Flood mammalian diversification evidenced in the Green River Formation.”  Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Creationism, 449–457.  Edited by A. A. Snelling.  2008.  A conference paper by John Whitmore of Cedarville University and Kurt Wise of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, both creationist researchers.  It argues that the Green River Formation, a fossil-rich lake deposit in Wyoming, Utah and Colorado, formed decades to several centuries after the Flood.  Neither this paper nor Whitmore & Garner 2008 (pp. 425–448) mentions amber or resin.  The article uses it for the timetable it sets for the Tertiary, which runs from the Flood to the Babel dispersion.

1. 68a.

   Page 452:  “If the beginning of the Tertiary corresponds to the Flood/post-Flood boundary as argued in the last paragraph, then the Tertiary sediments (worldwide) were deposited in the period between the Flood and the Babel dispersion.”  “the time between the Flood and the birth and death of Peleg is 101 and 340 years, respectively, in the short chronology, and 401 and 870 years, respectively, in the long chronology.”  Page 451:  Records that Austin, Baumgardner, Humphreys, Snelling, Vardiman and Wise (1994).  “accepted a K/T boundary for the Flood/post-Flood boundary”. ↩

Snelling, Andrew A.  Earth's Catastrophic Past: Geology, Creation and the Flood.  Institute for Creation Research, Dallas.  2009.  A two-volume book from the Institute for Creation Research on the geology of the Flood.  The article cites it for its timing of the post-Flood Ice Age, in the creationist schedule of events after the Flood.

1. 69a.

   Page 759:  Volume 2, on the post-Flood Ice Age, which.  “required several centuries to be fully initiated”.  ; the same page rules out a Tertiary/Quaternary boundary on that ground. ↩

Coppen, J. J. W., and G. A. Hone.  “Gum Naval Stores: Turpentine and Rosin from Pine Resin.”  Non-Wood Forest Products 2.  FAO, Rome.  1995.  A handbook from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations on turpentine and rosin, the products made from pine resin.  It gives tapping yields of about 3–4 kg of resin per tree a year and estimates how many mature pine trees a small processing plant needs.  The article uses it to argue that resin supply is not the limit on Baltic amber, since a large forest could in principle supply the whole mass in years.

1. 70a.

   Page 18:  “As a guide, suitable species grown under favourable conditions can yield 3-4 kg/tree annually.  Minimum acceptable yields are around 2 kg/tree.”  Page 17:  “If the annual yield of resin is 3 kg/tree, at least 330 000 mature pine trees would be necessary to provide resin feedstock to a small processing plant with an annual throughput of 1000 tonnes.”  Our own scale arithmetic, for scale only, not the source's: at 300 trees per hectare over 10⁵ km², tapped output would be about 9 × 10⁶ t/yr, so 640,000 t is 7% of one year's tapped output at full preservation, or about seven years at 1%.  Tapped yields overstate what a single wounding delivers; natural exudation is unmeasured. ↩

Miller, Hugh R. et al.  “Pioneering ¹⁴C dating of Wyoming amber and its implications for a young earth and global catastrophism.”  Creation Research Society Quarterly 43(2):84–94.  2006.  A 2006 article in the Creation Research Society Quarterly, a creationist journal, that radiocarbon-dates Baltic and Wyoming ambers.  It reports only lower limits for true amber, and the authors say those ambers have about the same radiocarbon age as the coal used as blanks.  The article uses it as the only creationist measurement of amber.

1. 71a.

   Page 84:  From the abstract:  “This is the first known instance of 'true amber' being directly dated.  ¹⁴C dates for amber were at the upper limit of the AMS dating method.  The Hanson Ranch amber buried with a triceratops is slightly younger than Baltic amber used as controls, but all true ambers are about the same radiocarbon age as the coals used as blanks.”  Table I, page 89:  Saxony succinite >49,210; Sambian succinite >51,900; Wyoming Lance Formation amber >46,450 radiocarbon years BP;.  “7 Kg 'Young amber or Collophony' from Bay of Gdansk, Poland ... 620 (± 30)”. ↩

2. 71b.

   Table I, page 89:  In the column headed.  “creation age”.  reads.  “~5,350 (± 100) pre-flood”.  for the three ambers, and.  “Post-flood modern”.  for the Gdańsk piece.  Page 87:  Locates Baltic amber.  “around Denmark, Sweden, northern Germany, Poland and the Soviet Union”.  The same passage is the ancestor of the phrase Oard 2024 uses:  “Swedish peninsula”. ↩

Kubota, Aya et al.  “Amber in the Cretaceous deep sea deposits reveals large-scale tsunamis.”  Scientific Reports 15:14298.  2025.  A research paper describing thirty amber-bearing sandstone beds in Early Cretaceous deep-sea rock on Hokkaido, Japan, dated by zircon U-Pb ages from two volcanic ash layers.  It argues that repeated large tsunamis destroyed coastal forests and carried amber and driftwood to the deep sea.  The article cites it as the one 2025 paper that does what creationists want, since it invokes tsunamis.

1. 72a.

   The summary paragraph gives seven steps:  “(1) the occurrence of major earthquakes and tsunamis;  (2) the complete destruction of forested coastal settings, (3) the discharge of a large amount of plant debris, fresh resin, and siliciclastic sediments into the ocean, (4) direct delivery to the deep sea floor by tsunami-induced turbidity currents;  while simultaneously, (5) wood and resin drifted on the sea surface, which (6) later sank to seafloors;  and finally (7) repetition of such tsunami events.” ↩

2. 72b.

   “Thirty amber-bearing beds, with thicknesses of 2–270 cm, were recognized in the sandstone beds of Units 2 and 4”.  “Units 1 and 3 are condensed, characterized by gray- and dark-green, unbioturbated claystones with ash-fall tuffs and well-developed parallel laminations of radiolarians”.  “The weighted mean of the ²⁰⁶Pb/²³⁸U zircon ages of two tuff layers (Zr 01, Zr 02) are 116.76 ± 0.68 Ma (n = 33, MSWD = 1.8) and 114.82 ± 0.89 Ma (n = 61 ...), respectively ... allow us to calculate the background sedimentation rate of the sequence, which is 0.38–3.66 mm/kyr.”  The wood fossils.  “lack bio-erosion by shallow-marine benthic boring organisms”. ↩

Clarey, Tim.  “Flood tsunamis transported trees and amber.”  Institute for Creation Research.  Sep 8, 2025.  A web article by Tim Clarey, director of research at the Institute for Creation Research, giving a Flood reading of the Kubota paper.  It says that tsunamis of the Flood tore up trees and carried them, and the amber they held, into the sea.  The article uses it as the creationist reading of the paper it quotes.

1. 73a.

   “ICR scientists have developed a progressive Flood model, where sea level rose for 150 days during the Flood year about 4,500 years ago.  The amber and tree pieces found in Japan were deposited as the Flood was nearing its high water point at the top of the Zuni Megasequence, close to day 150 of the Flood.”  “It's likely these amber deposits were never truly carried out to the deep sea.” ↩