HUGE Fossil Amber Insect ECOSYSTEM

The density and diversity of this amber specimen distinguishes it as among the best of the best. It contains some 80 to 100 insects (too many to accurately count), representing many insect orders, families and species in their natural interactive associations of an ancient rainforest ecosystem.

The trophy insect inclusion is a big, 19 mm long Thysanuran. Thysanurans, the silverfish, are of primitive design, appearing in the Devonian. Thysanura is thought by some to be the linking order between wingless and winged insects. The compound eyes are small; have three tail bristles on the end of their abdomen;the mouthparts are external; some species have scales covering the body. After hatching, the nymphs change to adults with minimal metamorphosis. The young are similar to adults except in size, molting until sexual maturity is attained. Molting may continue into adulthood, and there may be more than forty molts in the life of a thysanuran. There are some 700 named, extant species.

This specimen also contains 5 spiders representing the eternal struggle between predator and prey. One spider is adjacent to a carcass wrapped in web, possibly its own devoured last feast. There is also a tick, and several of the elusive Nasute termites that instead in pincers possess a prominant snout from which it sprays glue in defence of the nest.

The fossil ecosystem is contained in a 26.2 gram (almost a full ounce), 49 by 46 mm resinite grave providing a surreal landscape of life once animated.

It is in amber that once animated insect life is most exquisitely captured, and particularly when the creatures are in diverse association, as exemplified in this specimen from the foothills of the Andes Mountains in Colombia. And, among amber's, those few pieces that contain many species that at once filled their respective environmental niches, and yet together interacted in the general environment are to me the most fascinating. This is such a specimen.