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

Ancient plants were capable of producing resin to protect themselves 65 million years earlier than previously thought, study finds

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Ultraviolet light revealed a strong blue fluorescence in parts of the coal seam studied by the Chinese palaeontologists, suggesting it may contain amber. Photo: Handout
Dannie Pengin Beijing
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.

According to the paper, the palaeontologists were initially sceptical when they found hundreds of microscopic pieces of what appeared to be amber preserved in a coal seam dating from the Middle Devonian period around 393 million to 383 million years ago.

When the Chinese scientists observed what appeared to be pieces of amber embedded in the coal seam they were studying, their first reaction was excitement, followed by caution. Photo: Handout
When the Chinese scientists observed what appeared to be pieces of amber embedded in the coal seam they were studying, their first reaction was excitement, followed by caution. Photo: Handout

When Luo and his team travelled to Xinjiang in 2019, they did not expect the fossil samples they planned to examine and collect from the region’s unusual coal seam would yield the world’s oldest known amber, the paper said.

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