Member-only story
Here is the largest flower encased in amber. It’s more than 30 million years old, but that’s not all
The flower was found 151 years ago off the coast of the Baltic Sea. It comes from the world’s largest amber deposit, which is located in today’s Kaliningrad. It was misclassified in the past. Now scientists have reexamined the specimen.
In 1872, a unique organic inclusion was found in amber in what is now Kaliningrad. The flower that was inside was almost 3 cm in diameter. This means that the fossil is three times larger than most floral inclusions found so far. Scientists then determined that it was Stewartsia. It’s a plant in the tea family, which includes 22 species. After 151 years, the researchers decided to take another look at the amber.
Scientists have determined which species the flower inclusion belongs to
It turned out that there was a mistake years ago. Dr. Eva-Maria Sadowski of the Natural History Museum in Berlin and Dr. Christa-Charlotte Hoffmann of the University of Vienna examined the fossil under an electron microscope.
Scientists have discovered that the flower belongs to the Symplocos species. It’s a genus of flowering plants in the heath order, about 300 species, which are found in Asia and North and South America. Many of them grow…
