Photo taken near the Cuchi Tunnel in the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.A hairy caterpillar is stuck in a fresh latex. It sinks slowly like in a quicksand until it is completely covered with all its body parts undisturbed. The latex dries up and solidifies. Left to nature the specimen is preserved for thousands if not millions of years in the form of rock.
This is how delicate insects and other organisms are trapped in amber which came from resinous sap of gymnosperms. In the Jurassic Park movie the DNA of a dinosaur was extracted from a mosquito trapped in amber. Of course, this is fiction, but who knows if this will be possible in the future? ~
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