Burmite Myanmar Burmese Amber fossil dinosaur age

מאובן של חרק בתוך ענבר בורמזי "Insect ...

 Burmite Myanmar Burmese Amber fossil dinosaur age

מאובן של חרק בתוך ענבר בורמזי "Insect Fossil in Burmite Myanmar Amber",

Myanmar(Burma) amberThe History of Burmese Amber

Burmite comes from northern Myanmar (formerly Burma) and neighbouring countries. It has been mined, as an artistic material, since the time of the Chinese Han dynasty (ca. 200 years BCE).

The Chinese called it hu-pe and believed it to contain the soul of a tiger. It was considered a symbol of courage and valour. Over the centuries, the Chinese had a trade monopoly on Burmese amber, it was even referred to as “Chinese amber.”

In 1613, the Portuguese Jesuit Alvarez Semedo was the first European to write about the Burmese amber mines but in the later years there were no further accounts about them. The situation changed significantly after the Anglo-Burmese Wars (1826-1885) and Burma’s incorporation into British India, which is how an interest in the new kind of fossil resin arose in Europe.

In 1835, Britain’s Captain Hannay was the first to obtain a permit from the local authorities to visit amber mines in Burma and a year later he described his experiences. But the knowledge about Burmese amber began to flourish owing to the German researcher Fritz Noetling. It was he that described in 1892 how it was mined by means of wooden hoes and bamboo baskets and gave samples from the town of Maingkwan to the Gdańsk-based pharmacist Otto Helm.

Based on his research, Helm found this amber to be different from others that he was familiar with and was the first to call it burmite (1894). Noetling also brought burmite products to Europe (for example earplugs, beads, religious figurines). A heated discussion about the age of burmite began in the early 20th century. Based on insect studies, in 1917 T.D.T. Cockerell (see Poinar at al. 2008) was the first to suggest that it was a Cretaceous resin although other researchers claimed the Tertiary age of the burmite-bearing rock.

Due to the domestic unrest, burmite mines were closed down in 1936. This situation had continued for more than 60 years until 1999, when due to the gradual political change the amber mines were reopened. Initially, they were available only to US and Canadian companies but after the economic sanctions were lifted they also became accessible to international amber researchers and for commercial mining. As a result, the 21st century has brought flourishing research on burmite and a considerable increase in its production. The most interesting discoveries from this period include those made by Lambert and Wu (see Poinar et al. 2008), who designated burmite’s parent tree as the araucaria in 2002, while Tappert at al. (2013) described Cupressaceae as its botanical source (see Vávra 2015) and Cruickshank and Ko’s research (2003) confirmed Crockerell’s thesis about its Cretaceous origin.