Page "Amber" Paragraph 46

The oldest amber recovered dates to the Upper Carboniferous period ().

Its chemical composition makes it difficult to match the amber to its producers – it is most similar to the resins produced by flowering plants ; however, there are no flowering plant fossils until the Cretaceous, and they were not common until the Upper Cretaceous.

Amber becomes abundant long after the Carboniferous, in the Early Cretaceous,, when it is found in association with insects.

The oldest amber with arthropod inclusions comes from the MLevant, from Lebanon and Jordan.

This amber, roughly 125 – 135 million years old, is considered of high scientific value, providing some of the oldest sampled ecosystem.

In Lebanon more than 450 outcrops of Lower Cretaceous amber were discovered between the 1960s and 1990s, among which about 20 outcrops have yielded biological inclusions comprising the oldest representatives of several recent families of terrestrial arthropods.

Even older, Jurassic amber has been found recently in Lebanon as well.

Many remarkable insects and spiders were recently discovered in the amber of Jordan including the oldest zorapterans, clerid beetles, umenocoleid roaches, and achiliid planthoppers.