Amber Listserv / From the bug box #1

[Andy Ng]

Hi guys.

Most of the pieces in my bug box are chunks of Borneo resinite that can be
up to a few hundred grams each, and contain shadowy indistinct silhouettes
which may be insects. Today I found out that preparing a specimen for
identification is more laborious than I thought.

First the entire chunk of resinite is sanded and polished freeform-style in
order to see if there's more than one insect in it, then the portions that
contain insects are slowly sawed into thin slices and these fragile slices
are then sanded to 2000 grit and polished again...very slowlyyy, for fear of
stress fractures occurring (and to prevent natural stress fractures from
becoming worse). As you can see, there are several fractures in this bit,
and I may have to stabilize them with transparent epoxy resin.

To my disappointment, this bit of amber (see attached photos) did not
contain an insect, but rather some kind of grub/larva/caterpillar. It could
have been worse. At first, when the shadowy outlines started appearing, I
thought it was just another bloody bit of moss or frass or fern leaflet. At
least it's a young insect. Almost 3 bloody hours of bloody labor for it.
I'll do more slices when I have time/energy and hope the next ones have
wings and/or exoskeletons.

Andy
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