South America’s first insect-bearing amber unveils a lost 112-million-year-old forest

For more than a century, amber has helped scientists reconstruct vanished worlds by preserving tiny fragments of life that would otherwise have disappeared. Insects trapped inside these golden fossilised resins have revealed details about ancient forests across several continents, but South America remained a missing piece in that record. That changed with the discovery of amber deposits in central Ecuador containing the first known insect fossils preserved in amber from the continent. Dating back around 112 million years, the material captures a small but valuable snapshot of life in the forests of the Gondwanan supercontinent, offering clues about the plants, climate and creatures that existed during the Cretaceous period.112-million-year-old amber reveals Gondwana’s hidden insect worldThe study published in Communications Earth & Environment, titled ‘Cretaceous amber of Ecuador unveils new insights into South America’s Gondwanan forests’ revealed that the amber came from a quarry in the middle of Ecuador, where researchers…