Things preserved in amber

Trees

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Trees. Amber is fossilized tree resin, and its Greek name, elektron, gave English the word electric, because rubbed amber attracts light objects.

Blood and DNA cannot survive tens of millions of years

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Blood and DNA cannot survive tens of millions of years. The oldest DNA ever recovered, from Greenland sediment, is about two million years old, far short of the dinosaur era.

Insects

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Insects are by far the most common organisms found preserved in amber, because small creatures are most easily trapped and engulfed by sticky tree resin.

A feathered tail

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A feathered tail. Paleontologist Lida Xing spotted the sparrow-sized young dinosaur's tail in a piece of amber a trader showed him at a market.

Myanmar

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Myanmar. Its Kachin State mines have yielded thousands of species, but paleontologists have urged colleagues to shun the amber over links to conflict and abuses.

Sciadopityaceae (umbrella pines)

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Sciadopityaceae (umbrella pines). Infrared analysis matched Baltic amber's resin to this family, whose only living member is Japan's umbrella pine.

Mites

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Mites. Two gall-mite species and a fly turned up in the Triassic droplets, some 100 million years older than any earlier arthropods in amber.

A frog

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Electrorana limoae was a tiny juvenile frog, less than an inch long, representing the oldest frog ever found preserved in amber. It provided the first direct evidence that frogs inhabited wet tropical forests during the Cretaceous Period.

It is younger and not fully fossilized

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It is younger and not fully fossilized. Copal is tree resin caught partway through the hardening and polymerization that, given more time, turns it into amber.

Attacking it in its web

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Attacking it in its web. The juvenile spider was about to eat a tiny parasitic wasp, the only fossil ever found of a spider attacking prey caught in its web.