I mean, amber's physical properties in and of itself are cool as hell. Im also fond of the fact that bubbles found in amber can give us information about the atmospheric makeup of millions of years ago :D
@@rickbailey7450 It is organic, so C-14 could be one way. It gets imprecise over time. But still give a rough starting point for age estimation. Edit: Just checked, C-14 goes to max 60k Years. So probably not.
can we get an episode on how they study amber specimens? like how do you analyse every little spec of the amber learning even about the micro biome inside of them without destroying the sample
Lol first test ..swat it with a rock hammer..they drill it .in a vaccume..collecting the dust..they distroy it..its what they do..spectrail analyses.step one burn it .in front of a special camera..zap it with a lazer..plasma...they try not to distroy data..its also more expensive to do non distructive testing...not impossible.just alot of hassels...um both halfs of a 100 carat diamond are just as intresting ..to a geologist...and you get to see the guts..the heart...so the first order of distruction is in fact essential..its not worth anything untill i figure out what it is ....carnage is progress.
@@fransiscozip1459 how did they dig in to the throat of a flea from millions of years ago without destroying it in the process of getting it out of the Amber
Can we hear about copal? Because there’s this lady that sells ‘amber’ jewelry at art shows. But it’s positively PACKED with bugs, feels sticky and when tapped, sounds like plastic. The geologist in my brain keeps screaming that it’s copal and needs another million years to be true amber. I’d love to see an episode about amber vs copal. Please?
The reason we can't find good DNA in amber is because DNA half-life is about 10000 years if it's perfectly preserved/frozen. So getting dinosaur DNA is literally impossible, however we could find some cool pre-historic animals and resurrect them.
@Cristofer Andrade Oh yea, we probably won't ever get Jurassic Park and that's probably a good thing lol I mean there are literally 6 different movies that explain why this would be a BAD idea lol No the point of my post was more along the lines of pointing out the inaccuracies of carbon dating and other forms of identifying how old something is.
They absolutely have found soft tissues in the so called 60 million year old dinosaurs. They keep it quite because it destroys their theories of evolution.
Never thought about it but that last bird makes sense we think of birds evolving a beak into new tools but that's from learning about Galapagos finches. Other birds may have other avenues more available. Thanks for the new outlook on how evolution takes place.
Bat malaria is serious. It kills your parents and forces you to fight crime in your own city, wearing a dark suit... It can end deadly if you're not a billionaire who can afford appropriate gear.
We need a follow up one of this for more cool items in amber as the squashed remains of a small bird that lived 99 million years ago have been found encased in a cloudy slab of amber from Myanmar’s Hukawng Valley.
@@redcoraldragon2073 For those who want to see a picture of the ammonite: news.iu.edu/stories/2019/06/iub/05-ammonite-fossil-amber-ancient-sea-life-research.html Unfortunately it had been dead for some time before being preserved so we don't see the face of an ammonite.
Global warming and a RETURN to higher levels of carbon in the atmosphere will do more for trees and plants than 'team trees' could ever hope for. Let's make the earth warm again.
@@24emerald no it won't because a lot of disasters will follow like ice melting, droughts, inconsistent weather patterns and all sorts of crazy shenanigans
He's describing evolution wrong, as almost everyone does. Mutations are random. The fact that this long toe might have helped the bird survive is not "why" it developed. There is no "why". If random mutations are helpful, they may be passed to the next generation if the survival rate goes up. Or, if they're not UNhelpful (note double negative) they still might be passed. Retired librarian, MI, USA
Makes sense that a tree’s immune system would want to have a sticky bandaid that completely stops organic processes and eliminates the possibility of infection. Pretty cool adaptation
In one of the videos on amber trapped insects some youtuber claimed that there is actually no biological material left inside because it should have decomposed for the time being. As we can see from this video, that's not true. So maybe Jurassic Park explanation as to how they got dinosaurs DNA isn't that misguided.
alright i'm going to correct you right here. saying that kalleningrad represents weather in russia, is like saying that alaska accurately represents weather in the US.
While its technically correct to call Kaliningrad russia it is a russian exclave in northern poland. I as a european I know that but I don't think alot of americans do. It is not that strange that the climate of the southern baltic was warmer 35 million years ago. If you look just a bit southwest to germany and the Messel pit fossils (about as close to kaliningrad as mainland russia) you find that about 47 million years ago it was a lush subtropical climate with early mammals and crocodiles. It would be intresting to hear about more things they have found along the southern baltic sense it has among the largest amber deposits in the world. Russia is a big place so finding somthing "in Russia" could mean everything from the black sea to notheast siberia on the us border, geography is very important when talking about fossils! Thanks for trying to educate the world!
@Jake Sangria Well if I was making a video about finding fossils in Anchorage and I just said it was in America without showing where on a map. People (outside us) would be totally unaware of what climate or geology, etc. Quite important stuff when talking about fossils. Now if I were some random dude saying Anchorage is in America that wouldn't be much of a problem, but then again this is an EDUCATIONAL VIDEO and I would totally expect some angry Alaskan in the comments. It sounds like you think this is about some European pride when it is really about education. I know most people would just hear ''Kaliningrad in Russia'' and think there isn't more to it, a couple might google it but far more people will go to the comments and then BOOM EDUCATION. I would expect and hope that people will keep correcting mistakes like this sense I want to become more educated when watching an educational video. And about the foot in my mouth, how about I put it it yours!
@@kidstv1011You're welcome, sorry it took a month. It's kinda crazy to think it was In German control from 1255 - 1945 and only 4-5 years later there were almost no Germans left. Now it's military base, the size of a country.
@Jake Sangria In the video they say Kaliningrad and then refer to the cold climate in Russia and that's two totally different climates, just like Alaska and the contiguous US. Nobody is going to fly to Kaliningrad and I think if you pay money for a ticket, you'd want to know where you are going to. But I don't think everybody in the world knows the difference between Alaska and Florida, and I don't think they would look it up and I wouldn't expect them to either. I didn't want people to assume Kaliningrad was just some town in Siberia while that's exactly what it sounds like in the video and soooo far from the truth. Imagine that you are from (random country) the only thing you know about US is Hamburgers, apple pie, guns, the only states you know are California, Texas and Florida. Somebody says ''Oil drilling is big in Alaska, its warm in the US'', you are probably thinking about an oilfield in a desert. Even though the statement is true (oil drilling is big in Alaska and it is relativity warm in the US) Your image of the US and Alaska would be very wrong. Just trying to help.
Read up on that. Best guess is the disassembled amber room went up in flames when the castle it was supposedly stored in was bombed at the end of WWII.
Thank you- anthropologists, entomologists, biologists, researchers, epidemiologists, geologists, climatologists, et al.. and the Green brother staff! Gratitude
Jason Wilson: The amber IS the dipping sauce! Or rather, it WAS, before it fossilized. This is why you NEVER leave your dipping sauces out in the elements, no matter what that pimply-faced Krustyburger manager said.
Heard him say "trichomes"; Immediately paused and scrolled down to the comments looking for the obligatory weeder "omfg thats some dope herb homes" and was gleefully relieved at the lack of comments.
So hypothetically could you preserve someone alive in Amber for years? Considering the mosquitoes died in the tree sap, I'm guessing surviving is out of the question
My name is Amber. Once one kid figured out what my name meant, my nickname among my classmates in elementary school was, truly, "Petrified Tree Sap." Needless to say I have never really recovered. I did not know about all these different things preserved in amber! Fascinating.
Wait, will you do another video on stuff found in amber? I think Hank would be absurdly happy to learn that a DINOSAUR TAIL was found in amber! (Yes, including feathers!)
If there's only this one evidence for the bird with one long toe - how do researchers know it was a whole species and not one individual irregular toe in a species we already know?
You know, 11 years ago I heard about you and your brother talking once a day on video for a year. Vlog brothers 2.0 I think. Anyway, I watched you, then started doing my own channel. Twas long ago. Thanks for the inspiration! And know I know what amber is.
For some reason, I want to go put some of my hair in some tree resin so some future intelligent life can discover it and throw a wrench into what they thought humans were like.
Reminds me of a super corny but really good saturday morning cartoon: Sherlock Holmes In the 22nd Century. He gets preserved in amber or honey (I forget which) and when his body gets rediscovered he's brought back and of course it's Inspector Lestrad's great-great-great-great-great-great-great grand daughter who finds him, and they give him a robot Watson.
Too bad no really big trees exist to secrete gallons that could envelope a human for the enlightenment of the species that come along after we go extinct.
My guess to number 6 is a small velociraptor like bird. maybe hunting small rodents and stuff? the long toe could do similiar things to what the velociraptor claws do
There are "Trichomes" in Cannabis. It's what makes the "buds"on the plant so sticky. Anyone whom has ever trimmed Cannabis before knows this first hand.
I wonder the same thing. Especially since there's some weird af defects in modern animals. Like, if someone 100 million years from now found a deer skull and in life, that deer had the skull defect that makes its horns fuse, those people might think the 'unicorn' was a separate species when it wasn't.
It might be possible to also determine if the amber was from a native tree, narrowing down the area. Additional findings of more amber by the same plants could be another clue.
I believe pollen places stuff in context pretty good , they are very precise , before they publish an opinion , those ocean currents are semi perminent , also , and time is vast , many logs did many strange things , yet we mostly dig up average things , common things , normal things , then you reinspect the evidence's ...
Very unlikely that it be fossilized and make it over to be discovered in a place it didn't live. For something to be fossilized and be discovered, there has to be many examples. Most will never be found.
@@AlBert-tv9ut You're right. There's another word for that, I think... checking google....coprophagy. hmm... that was not the word I was thinking of. 🤔
Hank I really enjoy Sci Show. Great format, exciting topics and you are a great presenter! In this video you speak just a tiny bit slower and the picture of each subject is on screen long enough to allow a more satisfying look. Thanks!
@@n.g5855 If the seed has the right kind of shell, it might not be dried out. It's not impossible that a _very_ old seed would still grow, just _very_ unlikely. I remember hearing about a plant with seeds that sprout 100 years later.
Amber is generally around 100 million years old, and Hank just said it dries out the things it encases. I'm no plant expert, but it seems unlikely to me that a seed could still be viable after all that. DNA doesn't last that long.
@@pattifeit4354 Amber isn't always that old, just the kind that gets talked about the most. I wasn't talking about amber 100 million years old. However, don't put it past nature to somehow preserve DNA so long. Also, don't just take Hank at his word. He wouldn't want you to.
@lordelliott42 So how old was the amber you were talking about? 😉 If it's amber, it's still millions of years old. Now I hear they're getting good DNA out of animals found in the permafrost of the northern regions; but even those specimens are only thousands of years old, not millions. And not 100. Having said that, I rather like the thought that "life ... finds a way". And BTW, I didn't just take Hank's word, I merely referenced him. The dessicating effects of amber on things encased in it are pretty well documented.
@@LeatherNeck1833 I think you are underestimating the frequency of deformities. It happens all the time, do some bird watching and you'll see messed up feet
@@codylawson1257 Oh, I am not disputing that fact; I believe you there. What I'm talking about is the odds. See, resin that fossilizes into Amber isn't produced by every tree. Only certain Conifers produce the right type of resin. Granted, Conifers were the most plentiful sap producing trees during the Cretaceous, but then everything has to go right for it to survive 60 million years. The odds of a special one-of-a-kind foot getting stuck in just the right goo and then surviving the elements and such for millions of years is....Exponentially Improbable. If there were a million of these birds with this foot the odds of us finding the Amber that it got stuck in is still extremely low.
For the last one especially, how do they know that it's a completely different species and not just a "defect" or rare mutation? It seems like a jump to me.
