ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, May 5, 1996 TAG: 9605030082
SECTION: TRAVEL PAGE: 8 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: RANDY KRAFT ALLENTOWN MORNING CALL
If you didn't know better, you'd swear the amber positively glows.
Each piece is so dramatically lit that light seems to emanate from it.
Both exquisitely carved objects and tiny prehistoric animals shine in ``Amber: Window to the Past,'' an exhibit that runs through Sept. 2 at the American Museum of Natural History.
It's called the most comprehensive amber exhibit ever mounted. Because many objects in it are fragile and come from public and private collections all over the world, museum officials say they doubt another like it ever will be assembled.
``Amber transcends the boundary between art and science,'' said Michael J. Novacek, the museum's senior vice president and provost.
The first section of the exhibit, ``Amber in Nature,'' contains 146 small but fascinating fossils entombed in amber - plants, insects and other animals. The gallery is kept dark to accentuate the pieces.
It would be helpful, especially for children, if the exhibit had a series of panels illustrating the entire process - showing how insect-trapping sap oozing out of trees millions of years ago became hard amber mined from the Earth.
``Amber in Art,'' the second section of the exhibit, is filled with 94 decorative art objects made with amber from throughout history and from around the world.
The ``Amber'' exhibit's fossil section, along with its forest, may travel to other museums, but the art section will not. Another display in the exhibit shows amber fossil forgeries.
The exhibit makes only fleeting reference to the 1993 science-fiction movie ``Jurassic Park,'' but shoots a few big scientific holes in that movie's premise, in which dinosaurs are recreated from DNA found in mosquitoes trapped in amber.
One probably can see ``Amber: Window to the Past'' in about an hour. But it certainly provides another good reason to spend a day in the museum, which last spring reopened its renovated dinosaurs halls on the fourth floor. One catch is that, except for Friday nights, there's an additional fee to see ``Amber.'' If ever an exhibit needed a ``please touch'' display, this is it. Unfortunately, there is no place where you can run your hand across a chunk of amber or lift a piece (it's surprisingly light and feels like plastic).
To satisfy any craving you may have to touch amber, it is available to buy in museum gift shops. Amber samples containing insects sell for $40 to $190. A special amber shop has been set up just beyond the exhibit. Prices range from $3 to $1,750.
Museum officials call amber ``a keeper of biological secrets'' that can ``unlock keys to organisms tens of millions of years old.''
``It's the closest thing we have to a time capsule,'' said museum president Ellen Futter.
Amber is not a stone, gem or mineral. It is hardened tree resin, millions of years old. Unlike other fossils, it is organic. It even burns. Museum officials call it ``an organic jewel.''
Gold is the most predominant color, followed by yellow and red, but amber comes in dozens of colors - including rare greens and blues - ranging from transparent to opaque.
A visitor might wonder whether all amber comes from ``amber trees.'' It's really from different kinds of trees that grew on every continent except Antarctica. The exhibit includes the largest piece of transparent amber ever found, weighing 331/2 pounds.
Also on display are several pieces of amber, up to 94 million years old, found in New Jersey. Some hold the oldest bee, the oldest mushroom and the only known flower in amber from the Cretaceous period.
Most European amber comes from eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, where it has been collected for at least 10,000 years. Other amber is mined. One effective display seems to look deep into a Mexican amber mine, where a distant miner appears to be working alone by lantern light. Virtually all amber mining in Mexico and the Dominican Republic is done by hand, using shovels and machetes.
Amber entraps things usually not found in the fossil record, because the organisms are too small or too soft to fossilize, said Novacek.
David Grimaldi, chairman and associate curator of the museum's entomology department, said he doesn't expect visitors to become experts on prehistoric life by admiring plants, insects and vertebrates captured in amber. He just wants visitors to notice ``how exquisitely presented they are and the tremendous diversity preserved.''
Among those entrapped organisms, called inclusions, are a pair of tiny, delicate craneflies, preserved while mating.
Other bugs include crickets, leafhoppers, mosquitoes, moths, flies, beetles, cockroaches, ticks, spiders, centipedes and wasps.
Some displays require taking a close-up view, such as a mantis nymph being attacked by three ants or an amblygid, a fierce-looking relative of the spider, with its prey still caught between its jaws.
There are tiny scorpions and tinier pseudo-scorpions, small lizards, a bird feather, even a frog - considered ``an exceptional rarity.''
Fossils in the exhibit's first major room surround an ``ancient Dominican amber forest'' - a diorama created by museum designers. It recreates a stand of four large Hymenaea trees, members of the pea family, from a forest 23 million to 30 million years old.
The centerpiece of ``Amber in Art'' is a recreated corner of the Amber Room, which for nearly two centuries was in Ekatarinsky Palace outside St. Petersburg.
Created by Prussian artists and presented to Tsar Peter the Great, the room consisted of 22 wall panels covered in a mosaic of more than 100,000 carved pieces of amber. The museum calls Amber Room the peak of amber artistry.
The panels were removed by the Nazis during World War II and never recovered. No one knows if they still exist.
Amber was ``the original precious and semi-precious substance, before any other,'' said Grimaldi. Etruscans and ancient Romans were among those who cherished amber more than gold.
Examples on display go all the way back to the Stone Age, such as axe heads and an amulet carved into the shape of a bear.
Many of the decorative carved objects are from 17th to 19th century Europe. There are delicate bottles, jewelry, a German tankard, an elaborate crucifix, a rosary, amulets, game boards and chess pieces.
One of the most stunning displays is a necklace, brooch and earrings made of amber set in gold.
LENGTH: Long : 127 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: RANDY KRAFT/ALLENTOWN MORNING CALL. 1. A prehistoricby CNBscorpion is perfectly preserved in a piece of amber at the "Amber:
Window to the Past" exhibit at the American Museum of Natural
History. 2. Among the jewelry on display at the American Museum of
Natural History are a gold and amber necklace, pin and earrings
(right). 3. David Grimaldi (above), chairman and associate curator
of the entomology department at the American Museum of Natural
History in New York, shows an amber display in front of a recreated
ancient forest. 4. An intricate ivory and amber chest dates from the
18th century. color.