The Amber Forest: A Reconstruction of a Vanished World.

by George O. Poinar Jr., Roberta Poinar

In Jurassic Park, amber fossils provided the key to bringing dinosaurs back to life. Scientists in the movie extracted dinosaur blood from mosquitoes preserved for millions of years in amber--hardened tree resin--and used the blood's DNA to revive the creatures that terrified audiences around the globe. In this book, George and Roberta Poinar use amber for a similar act of revival--only they bring back an entire ecosystem. The Poinars are world leaders in the study of amber fossils and have spent years examining the uniquely rich supply that has survived from the ancient forests of the Dominican Republic. They draw on their research here to reconstruct in words, drawings, and spectacular color photographs the ecosystem that existed on the island of Hispaniola between fifteen and forty-five million years ago. The result is the most accurate picture scientists have yet produced of any tropical forest of the past.


The specimens examined by the Poinars reflect amber's extraordinary qualities as a medium for preservation. Millions of years ago, countless plants, invertebrates, and small vertebrates were trapped in the sticky resin that flowed from the trees of ancient forests and, as that resin hardened into translucent, golden amber, they were preserved in almost perfect condition. Samples analyzed and illustrated here include a wide range of insects and plants--many now extinct--as well as such vertebrates as frogs, lizards, birds, and small mammals. There are even frozen scenes of an assassin bug grappling with a stingless bee, for example, and a spider attacking a termite. By examining these plants and animals and comparing them to related forms that exist today, the authors shed new light on the behavior of these organisms as well as the environment and climate in which they lived and died.


The Poinars present richly detailed drawings of how the forests once appeared. They discuss how and when life colonized Hispaniola and what caused some forms to become extinct. Along the way, they describe how amber is formed, how and where it has been preserved, and how it is mined, sold, and occasionally forged for profit today. The book is a beautifully written and produced homage to a remarkable, vanished world.

Genres: Natural History

292 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

George O. Poinar Jr. is an American entomologist and writer. He is known for popularizing the idea of extracting DNA from insects fossilized in amber, an idea which received widespread attention when adapted by Michael Crichton for the book and movie Jurassic Park.

Poinar earned a BS and MS at Cornell University, and remained there for his doctoral studies, receiving a PhD in biology in 1962. He spent many of his years of research at University of California, Berkeley in the Department of Entomology, Division of Insect Pathology. There, and during travels around the globe, he performed research on the axenic culture of nematodes, nematode parasites of insects and the fossil records of insects and nematodes in amber.

Reviews

[Bob Newman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bugs, Plants, Frogs in Sap Tip Us to Primeval Jungle

Millions of years ago, a meat-eating animal snuck through the primeval forest in what is now the Dominican Republic. Taking a short break in the shade of the towering canopy, it sat on some bamboo shoots which broke off in its fur. As the animal continued on its search for its next meal, the shoots began to irritate it. Growling (as I imagine), it rubbed up against an algarrobo tree. Some of the irritating plant fell out, along with one or two of the animal's hairs. These things fell into some resin or sap which exuded from the tree. The sap preserved them perfectly. Later the large drop of sap fell to the ground, was covered by debris which turned to earth, burying the sap completely. It lay there for a million or more years, then the ocean rose, taking the object to the bottom, where it was polished or preserved for more millions of years. Finally, due to the tectonic movements of the earth's plates, the ocean bottom where the (now) amber lay rose up into the mountains of an island. When Europeans arrived there in the tiny fragment of time known as "history" in this whole unbelievable span, they dug out the amber and found the preserved proof of that one moment in an animal's activities a possible 25 million years ago !

Poinar and Poinar have created a fascinating scientific work with their reconstruction of what the forest of that epoch looked like. Using the thousands of examples of plants, seeds, petals, leaves, pollen, insects, and frogs or lizards that fell into the tree sap and were preserved like time capsules, they describe the ancient jungle long before any human trod this earth. They rely on the principle of behavioral fixity-that is, the idea that species that fill certain ecological niches today did so in the past as well. They describe dozens of strange creatures, mostly insects (because they were abundant and small enough to get trapped often) that inhabit today's tropical forests as well as those in the past. The majority of the book is devoted to describing as many organisms as possible with an enormous number of black and white photographs and line drawings to help your imagination. They also have a whole section of color photographs of the actual amber pieces. At the end there is a short reconstruction (or summary) of the whole vanished forest as well as an interesting discussion of climatic change and the reason for the disappearance of many species between that time and the present.

Not being a person with a scientific background, I found all these things excitingly different from my usual reading fare, but the language used-apart from having to deal with such terms as homozygotic, depurination, dehiscent, and phytotelmata, which don't exactly roll off my tongue-is understandable by any educated lay reader. I found THE AMBER FOREST one of the most fascinating books of science that I have ever read and one of the best books in any field that I've read recently. If learning about the symbiosis of plants and insects, parasites and hosts, ants and fungus, in fact all the biological world of a long-gone jungle, has any appeal to you, don't miss this work.

[Jeffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating gallery of ancient organisms preserved in amber of a particular age and location. Mostly insects and other arthropods which is fine by me, I enjoyed the overview of insect relationships and such that were covered alongside the representatives of the different groups found in amber. The format was a little strange and took some getting used to, I feel like there could have been a better way to present the images and the text but I don't know, felt a little awkward flipping back and forth throughout reading. All in all, very interesting especially if you like insects and fossils.

[Last Ranger · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Island That Time Forgot!

In the western hemisphere, just south of the Tropic of Cancer, lies a chain of islands called The Greater Antilles. There are four islands in the chain: Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Cuba and, the subject of this book, Hispaniola (comprising of Haiti and the Dominican Republic). Some 15 to 45 million years ago Hispaniola was a tropical paradise with forested slopes and a thriving ecosystem. Within those forests lived several kinds of tropical trees, one of which was the Algarrobo tree, "Hymenaea protera", which is now mostly extinct in The Greater Antillies. This species exudes a kind of sticky resin that, after a time, hardens into an intermediate form known as copal. During the intervening eons that follow, the copal itself becomes "fossilized" into a totally unique kind of fossil that today we call amber. Authors George Jr and Roberta Poinar have brought it all together in their amazing 1999 book: "The Amber Forest". Between the two of them, the Poinars have spent most of their professional lives studying Entomology and "amber inclusions" in an attempt to reconstruct and study this very ancient, “vanished world". Roberta is also an electron microscopist and, with the help of some moderne technology, she and George have opened an amber tinted window into the past. While the Algarrobo resin was still fresh it acted as a perfect litter trap for any kind of falling plant debris such as leaves, flowers, pollen, etc. Not only plants but animal life too found itself trapped in the thick sticky discharge, to be perfectly preserved, along with the plant litter, in minute detail, as the resin is slowly transformed into amber. These Amber inclusions reveal much about Hispaniola's ancient forest, and the animal life that lived in its depths. All living things are united with other living things in a kind of parasitical, symbiotic or predatory relationship. If a biologist is familiar with the life history of a certain organism, say a flowering tree, then she can recognize the effect that the tree’s symbiont , say a moth larva, has on that tree. So, even though she doesn’t see the moth, or it’s larva, she knows it has to be there. Thus when the Poinar’s see an amber inclusion, say a leaf, that has recognizable damage then they know there is something out there even though they may have never seen one in amber. In this way the Poinar’s can speculate on the total population of any given environment. On Hispaniola there were several kinds of trees supporting a multitude of flowering plants, mosses and fungi. And these in turn supported numerous animal groups from the tiniest insects to a stunning variety of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. But even this incredible collection of fossils only scratch’s the surface and there remains even more yet to be discovered. Deposits of amber can be found in mines throughout the world but some of the finest specimens come from the Dominican Republic and are thus named: Dominican Amber*. “The Amber Forest” is illustrated with numerous photographs of amber specimens in black & white, with a center series of color plates as well. Included with the photos are several detailed drawings of various plants and animals in their natural setting, all done by the authors. By combining the study of amber inclusions with their knowledge of modern day plants and animals the authors have been able to extrapolate many details of this prehistoric world. “The Amber Forest” concludes with a look at modern fauna in the West Indies as well as a bit of speculation on various animals that may have been part of Hispaniola’s ancient ecosystem but, so far, have not left any traces in the fossil record**. In this well written and visually stunning book the Poinars provide the reader with an extensive list of fossil species as well as a peek into the life histories of both modern and extinct life forms. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in nature and evolutionary biology, it’s well worth your time!
*Mexico and Myanmar (Burma) also have made some astonishing finds in their Amber Inclusions.
**Additional issues that are briefly covered: (1)The Greater Antilles Tectonic history (2)possible migration routes for the island chain’s flora and fauna (3)the effect that Ice Age cooling may have had on regions biosphere (4)the preparation of specimens and the hazards of collecting Amber (5) DNA research.

Last Ranger

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book with lots of pictures of cool stuff caught in amber. It describes what is known about the tropical ecosystem of the island of Hispaniola between 15-45 million years ago. Most of the creatures caught in amber no longer exist, though they may have close relatives still living in the vicinity or elsewhere in the world. Highlights include a picture of a pair of fireflies caught in that special moment of coitus, as well as various parasites emerging from their hosts in failed attempts to escape their unfortunate fate.

My favorite quote from this book, "All of the above groups [treehoppers and planthoppers] have a trait that can be used to their advantage. They produce deposits of honey dew, an excretory product of their liquid sap diet. This is quite attractive to ants, which relish the deposits enough to protect its source from predators and parasites. Thus an excretory product ended up fortuitously providing a strategy of protection" (51). I wish my excretory product provided me with protection.

While I enjoyed this book, it wasn't really written with a layperson in mind, and many specialist terms were used but not defined in the text or even in a glossary. Some were easy enough to figure out in context (e.g., ovipositor), but it was frustrating at times. And the size of the specimens was not consistently indicated. I assume the pictures were not all actual size, so it would have been nice to know how big things actually were. My last complaint is that the first chapter was 12 pages, the second chapter was 155 pages, the third chapter was 20 pages, and the fourth chapter was 8 pages. Why the hell was chapter two so long? I hate long chapters.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book the Poinars draw together information from amber fossils and extant species in the Dominican Republic to recreate a forest ecology. Using a narrative style, they provide extensive descriptions of the insects and probable behavior including relationships with plants, with other insects, and other animals. These descriptions are then drawn together to give an overview of the ecology of a moist tropical forest. The book is well written and accessible.