Amber Trivia
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42 free Amber trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This amber trivia quiz covers fossilised tree resin from the Devonian forests to the Kaliningrad mines of today. The early questions deal with what amber actually is, how sticky resin becomes copal and then amber, why the Greeks called it elektron and gave us the word 'electricity', why the English word once meant ambergris, and how Pliny explained the pine smell it gives off when rubbed. The middle section covers where amber comes from and what is inside it: the Baltic 'blue earth' that still yields 90 per cent of the world's supply, the succinic acid that defines succinite, the umbrella-pine relatives that produced it, Dominican amber from the extinct Hymenaea protera and its rare blue variety, the 99-million-year-old Burmese amber with birds and lizards inside, the oldest insects in amber from Italy and Lebanon, and the mosquito that never yielded dinosaur blood. The last questions turn to human uses and stories: the Amber Road to Aquileia, Stone Age jewellery, teething necklaces the FDA warns against, the Vienna pipe factories, Goethe's amber lenses, David Attenborough's boyhood gift, the Prussian craftsmen who built the Amber Room, the Tsar who received it and the mystery of where it went in 1944. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on amber, its regional varieties, the Amber Road and the Amber Room.
30 of 42 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Prized by ancient traders, amber has sometimes been nicknamed the gold of which compass direction?
The North
The North: the ancient Egyptians buried amber in tombs for the afterlife.
Q 02Via Arabic, the word 'amber' first named ambergris, a perfume ingredient made by which animal?
The sperm whale
The sperm whale produces ambergris in its gut; the name later passed to fossil resin, perhaps because both were found washed up on beaches.
Q 03Amber's ancient Greek name is the root of which modern English word?
Electricity
Electricity takes its name from the Greek elektron, because rubbed amber builds a static charge that pulls in light objects like chaff.
Q 04In Greek myth, amber formed from the tears of sisters mourning which brother, struck from the sky by Zeus?
Phaethon
Phaethon lost control of his father Helios's chariot and scorched the earth, so Zeus struck him down, and his grieving sisters turned into trees.
Q 05Amber's Latin name, succinum, comes from 'sucus', a word meaning what?
Juice
Juice: Pliny wrote that his forefathers believed amber was the juice of a tree, and named it succinum for that reason.
Q 06Why do trees produce the sticky resin that can eventually become amber?
To seal wounds
To seal wounds: resin oozes over damaged bark and keeps flowing around whatever it traps, which is why insects in amber survive in such detail.
Q 07What intermediate substance does resin become before it hardens fully into amber?
Copal
Copal is so similar to amber that it is often used to imitate it, yet the main difference between the two is simply that copal is younger.
Q 08Amber is about as hard as which of these?
A fingernail
A fingernail: amber is so soft that ordinary everyday wear can easily leave it scratched.
Q 09Cloudy, opaque 'bony amber' owes its appearance to what?
Numerous tiny bubbles
Numerous tiny bubbles are common in amber, and pieces clouded by them are worth less than clear ones.
Q 10Which region holds the world's largest deposits of amber?
Kaliningrad Oblast
Kaliningrad Oblast was once German land, but today it is an isolated Russian enclave on the Baltic coast.
Q 11When real amber is burned, its smoke smells most like what?
Pine
Pine: Pliny noticed the resinous smell of burning amber and took it as proof that amber was once tree resin.
Q 12Bernstein, the German word for amber, is built from the same two roots as which English word?
Brimstone
Brimstone: both began as old Germanic words for 'burning stone', a name amber earned because it catches fire.
Q 13Beachcombers on the Baltic coast find the most amber washed ashore after what?
Storms
Storms: the amber lies in deposits on the seabed offshore, so rough seas churn it loose and roll it onto the beach.
Q 21Which marine animal, unexpectedly, has been found in Burmese amber?
An ammonite
An ammonite: resin from a coastal forest engulfed its shell along with sand and shoreline creatures such as isopods.
Q 22Microbiologist Raúl Cano said he revived ancient yeast from amber, then used it to make what?
Beer
Beer: in 2008 he co-founded a brewing company using the strain, and a brewer found it gave pale ale a crisp, citrusy, gingery tang.
Q 23Which broadcaster's boyhood gift of insect-filled amber became the subject of his documentary The Amber Time Machine?
David Attenborough
The gift from his adoptive sister in 1938 became the focus of a BBC film in 2004.
Q 14Unlike most Baltic amber, Dominican amber is nearly always what?
Clear
Clear: its see-through pieces show a wealth of fossils, which has let scientists reconstruct a long-vanished tropical forest in detail.
Q 15A tiny skull in Burmese amber, hailed in 2020 as a dinosaur, turned out to be what?
A lizard
A lizard: Nature retracted the paper after a second specimen cast doubt, and a 2021 study of it showed an unusual lizard.
Q 16Why did a paleontology society urge journals to stop publishing on Myanmar amber found after June 2017?
The army seized the mines
The army seized the mines: amber sales there help fund internal conflict, and the society refused to profit from a humanitarian crisis.
Q 17Illegal amber miners in Ukraine's forests free the amber from the soil mainly using what?
Water pumps
Water pumps: gangs force water into the ground to wash the amber out, destroying stretches of forest in the process.
Q 18In 2016, scientists announced that a lump of amber held which part of a feathered dinosaur?
A tail
A tail: a scientist spotted it at an amber market, already polished for jewellery by traders who took the feathery wisp inside for a bit of plant.
Q 19A tiny wasp preserved in Dominican amber shows that which trees grew in that ancient forest?
Fig trees
Fig trees: fig wasps and figs depend on each other completely, since the wasps breed only inside the figs they pollinate.
Q 20A queen ant in Dominican amber grips a mealybug in her jaws, most likely to do what?
To found a new colony
To found a new colony: these ants guard such insects for a share of the sap they feed on, so queens carry them to new nests.
Q 24Why were 1990s reports of DNA recovered from insects in amber later dismissed?
No lab could repeat them
No lab could repeat them: careful attempts found no ancient DNA, suggesting the first samples were contaminated with modern DNA.
Q 25Pliny complained that a tiny amber figurine could fetch a higher price than what?
A healthy slave
A healthy slave: Romans bought amber purely for prestige, so small carvings became costly luxury status symbols.
Q 26Which Roman emperor decorated his arenas with so much amber that it showed off his vast wealth?
Nero
Nero: to supply such displays, Romans were already trading for amber from the shores of the southern Baltic by his reign.
Q 27Pliny reported that the inhabitants of the amber-strewn Isle of Abalus used the material for what?
Fuel
Fuel: the islanders burned amber in place of wood and sold the rest to their neighbours, the Teutones.
Q 28Which of these can permanently damage the surface of amber jewellery?
Rubbing alcohol
Rubbing alcohol: amber is a soft natural resin, and alcohol and other solvents can partly dissolve its surface for good.
Q 29What is 'ambroid'?
Pressed amber made from heated, compressed fragments
Small pieces once used only for varnish are heated without air and forced through a metal plate under hydraulic pressure.
Q 30A 2026 study of which writer's amber collection found a fossil ant preserved inside one piece?
Goethe
Goethe was likely unaware of it: the ant sat unnoticed in his overlooked collection until scientists scanned the amber with X-rays.