Fossil Biodiversity and Paleoenvironments in Amber Deposits

Amber deposits provide extraordinarily detailed snapshots of ancient ecosystems, preserving organisms and environmental proxies in three-dimensional fidelity. Ranging in age from the Cretaceous through the Cenozoic, major deposits—such as those in Myanmar, the Baltic region, Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Sakhalin—capture a wide spectrum of terrestrial and marginal-marine life. Inclusions encompass arthropods, crustaceans, plants, fungi and microorganisms, often retaining fine morphological features that allow reconstructions of behaviour, trophic interactions and habitat preferences. Geochemical analyses of the resin and its inclusions yield data on palaeotemperature, humidity and forest composition, while exceptional preservation of soft tissues can inform molecular clock calibrations and evolutionary rates. Amber thus bridges palaeobiology and palaeoenvironmental sciences, illuminating biogeographical patterns, resin-producing flora and the responses of ancient biotas to climatic and tectonic perturbations. Integrative studies combining morphological, geochemical and phylogenetic approaches continue to reveal the global significance of amber as a window into past biodiversity and the dynamics of prehistoric landscapes.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Early Miocene amber from Chiapas, Mexico, has yielded the first fossil harpacticoid copepods preserved in resin, demonstrating that mangrove-associated microcrustaceans were already established in tropical estuarine settings over 20 million years ago. Detailed morphology of setation patterns closely matches that of modern mangrove fauna, underscoring long-term stability of this specialised niche. In the same amber horizon, a new species of caridean shrimp, Palaemon aestuarius, provides the earliest evidence of Palaemonidae inhabiting a tidal mangrove estuary, alongside terrestrial arthropods and plant debris, refining interpretations of resin deposition in tide-influenced environments. From the mid-Cretaceous of Spain and France, exceptionally preserved tanaidaceans reveal fully formed marsupial brood pouches bearing oostegites, offering direct proof of parental care strategies in peracarid crustaceans and suggesting that such reproductive adaptations contributed to their evolutionary success and diversification during the Cretaceous.

Fossil Biodiversity and Paleoenvironments in Amber Deposits publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in fossil biodiversity and paleoenvironments in amber deposits across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Amber: Fossilised plant resin, often rich in terpenoids, that entombs organisms and other materials, preserving them in three dimensions.

Bioinclusion: Organic or inorganic material, such as an organism or plant fragment, that is trapped within amber.

Palaeoenvironment: The ancient environmental conditions reconstructed from geological, chemical and biological evidence.

Harpacticoid copepod: A small, benthic group of copepods within the class Crustacea, many of which live in association with mangrove or intertidal habitats.

Peracarida: A superorder of malacostracan crustaceans characterised by a marsupial brood chamber formed by oostegites.

Marsupium: A ventral brood pouch in peracarid crustaceans, formed by oostegites, in which eggs and juveniles develop.

Oostegite: A specialised, plate-like appendage on the thoracic limbs of peracarid crustaceans that helps enclose the marsupium.

References

1. Early Miocene amber inclusions from Mexico reveal antiquity of mangrove-associated copepods. Scientific Reports (2016).
2. The first amber caridean shrimp from Mexico reveals the ancient adaptation of the Palaemon to the mangrove estuary environment. Scientific Reports (2019).
3. Marsupial brood care in Cretaceous tanaidaceans. Scientific Reports (2017).
4. Burma Terrane Amber Fauna Shows Connections to Gondwana and Transported Gondwanan Lineages to the Northern Hemisphere (Araneae: Palpimanoidea). Systematic Biology (2023).
5. Nichima gen. nov. (Alismataceae) based on reproductive structures from the Oligocene‐Miocene of Mexico. American Journal of Botany (2023).
6. A new species of rust fungi from the middle Eocene Sakhalinian amber. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica (2021).