Video 12 Most Amazing Things Discovered in Amber

From a ancient spider stuck in an embarrassing stance to discoveries of new species these are amazing archaeology finds!

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7. A Preserved Salamander
It was last year that a fragment of amber was discovered in the Dominican Republic and was harboring a salamander. It’s the first time that a salamander has ever been discovered inside of amber and was alive 20 million years ago. The find also provides proof that the animals were once found living on the islands located in the Caribbean Sea, even though there’s not a trace of them there in the modern era. As stated before, it is rare that an animal bigger than an insect becomes trapped in amber but it’s believed this salamander couldn’t escape because it had lost one of its legs.

6. A Preserved Ant Fight
This snapshot of the past holds a battle that’s been taking place for approximately 100 million years. This fossilized piece of amber was discovered in Burma earlier this year in February and shows the two ants with their jaws locked together. Not only that but other ants and termites were discovered within the same piece of amber. Two of them ended up being new species and one of the termite soldiers is a little more than an inch in length, which is the longest termite soldier ever to be discovered.

5. A Preserved Spider Fight
These two armored spiders forever locked in combat were discovered in a mine in north Burma just a few months ago and are dated at being around 99 million years old. Hailing from the Late Cretaceous period, these spiders from the Tetrablemmidae family are equipped with distinct horns on their body that have two prongs on the tips, which are said to be a strange characteristic, even for these spiders. This species of spider is said to have six eyes but scientists weren’t able to find any on either specimen. They say this most likely because the eyes weren’t preserved as well as everything else and not because they didn’t have eyes.

4. A Harvestmen Spider
This poor harvestmen spider. For 99 million years, this spider has been forever immortalized in Burmese amber in a constant state of arousal. The erect spider was apparently nowhere near any female so the explanation of a reproductive encounter was eliminated and that the spider’s erection could have been caused by elevated blood pressure brought on by a struggle. Harvestmen spiders have been on earth for more than 400 million years and they’ve evolved to pretty much all look the same but thanks to this spider’s appendage it could be a new way of precisely identifying each species.

3. A New Species of Plant
This new species of plant stuck inside pieces of amber was identified earlier this year back in February and it only took thirty years after it was discovered by entomologist George Poinar from Oregon State University. The fragments of amber were first found down in an amber mine in the Dominican Republic during the 1980’s. It wasn’t until the samples were given to a botany professor named Lena Struwe to be analyzed that she realized the plant was of an entirely new species after comparing it to more than 200 other different species in the genus Strychnos. She also concluded that there is a high chance that this plant could contain the poison strychnine as it’s closely related to modern day plants that make the same poison.

2. A Flesh Eating Plant
This flesh eating plant was discovered frozen in time in a piece of baltic amber back in 2014. The 40-million-year-old plant that was once native to Russia happened to be quite the carnivore as it used its leaves that were covered in a very sticky glue to catch its next meal. Researchers believe that the “glue” was either secreted from the plant’s glands or its tentacles. Once an insect was trapped, the plant would drown it in slime and then digest it using specially released enzymes to break it down. The plant was discovered inside of a mine close to Kaliningrad located on the Baltic Sea. This is considered rare as plants aren’t usually fossilized in amber and this is believed to be the first carnivorous plant to do so.

1. A New Species of Cockroach
This extremely frightening-looking cockroach was discovered last year and thanks to its amber prison has managed to stay this well preserved for 100 million years. Just look at this thing! It makes you kind of glad about the present day roaches we have to deal with and not these unholy abominations of nature. At 1 centimeter long, these nasty little buggers were vicious predators who stalked their prey during the night and came equipped with long legs to help catch their meals, along with a set of modified eyes on top of their head. During the Cretaceous period in which it lived, there were several different species of predatory cockroach that have mostly died out now, except for the modern day praying mantis.