Amber Listserv / From the bug box #1

[tamber12 at aol.com]

Actually, this is very cool!? You can see what appear to be some kind of internal organ structures.? Nice.



Tammi


-----Original Message-----
From: Andy Ng <andy.ng.aik.hoe at gmail.com>
To: amberlistserv <amber at ambericawest.com>
Sent: Tue, 28 Aug 2007 6:27 am
Subject: Amber Listserv / From the bug box #1



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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