China team unearths world’s oldest amber, hidden in ancient Xinjiang coal seam

Chinese scientists have uncovered the world’s oldest verified amber in the northwestern Xinjiang region, revealing that ancient plants were producing protective resin 385 million years ago, long before most animal groups had emerged to damage them.

The amber – discovered in coal seams in West Junggar, part of an ancient zone where tectonic plates collided, grew and merged – pushes back the record by roughly 65 million years and challenges some long-held assumptions about the origins of plant resins.

Until now, the oldest known amber to have been isolated from rock and confirmed through chemical analysis dated to the Late Carboniferous period, around 320 million years ago, when the first herbivores also emerged.

The researchers, led by Luo Cihang, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, detailed their findings in a paper published by the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances on July 15.