Amber is an amazing time capsule, preserving minute and delicate creatures that lived millions of years before humans appeared on this planet. According to finds made in pieces of amber from different places, ancient forests were full of bugs and studying them makes our understanding of the long-gone ecosystem more complete. Of course, the information we get from amber is biased towards woodlands and the size of the creatures that can be trapped inside the resin produced by the trees. Nevertheless, amber fascinates many scientists and collectors. To reveal structural details, the inclusions are imaged with various techniques, including X-ray tomography. We decided to do it using laser scanning microscope. The microscope illuminates the specimen with laser light of several colors and measures fluorescence and reflected light in several spectral bands. The software combines the images creating a composite or merged image of an insect.
The images look colorful, kind of artistic and contain small details that would be hard to record with a traditional microscope. Look at these faceted eyes! They might have seen dinosaurs. What’s cool about this approach is that you can do 3-D reconstruction of the specimen. However, the limitation is that the light does not penetrate well through the layer of carbon, which is the only thing left from the ancient insects trapped in amber for long-long time. As a result, we can only reconstruct half of the animal. But it provides very detailed colorful image and you can always flip the specimen over to image another side. It may also be a way to verify authenticity of the inclusions because fluorescence of the biomolecules may help to distinguish between modern-day and fossilized remains.
Depending on the condition of the specimen and wavelength you can sometimes see internal structures as well. By the way, we are not entomologists or paleontologists. So, if you know species shown in this video let us know in the comments. If you like our videos about Nature’s curiosities, subscribe to keep in touch. Thanks for watching a have a great day!
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