The Amber Forest: A Reconstruction of a Vanished World. (Paperback)

~ George Poinar Jr. (Author), Roberta Poinar (Author) "Step back in time and explore with us a primeval forest that flourished some 15-45 million years ago and then disappeared, leaving testimony of its..." (more)
Key Phrases: algarrobo forest, known bee fauna, amber forest, Dominican Republic, South America, Greater Antilles (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Long thought to be unique to the Baltic region, amber--fossilized tree sap, often bearing the remains of ancient plants and animals--is widely distributed throughout the world. Here entomologists George and Roberta Poinar take readers on a tour of one out-of-the-way amber bed, located in the rainforest of the Dominican Republic, that formed over a period between 45 and 15 million years ago. This particular amber, formed mostly from the pungent sap of the algarrobo tree, attracted many curious creatures, including stingless bees and scorpions, as well as bits and pieces of material that happened to be floating by: hairs from a long-extinct Antillean rhinoceros and a saber-toothed tiger, spider webs, and seeds from plants that now take on slightly different forms. The Poinars' findings show that the prehistoric Antilles region, formed from large-scale volcanic and tectonic events, has declined in biodiversity, and they help give a more complete picture of the ancient climate than has hitherto been available.

The Poinars catalog the Dominican remains in great detail, and general readers may find their descriptions to make for slow going. But readers with some knowledge of or interest in paleontology, as well as collectors of amber specimens, will likely be fascinated by the window into the distant past that the New World amber affords. --Gregory McNamee --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Millions of years ago, entire insects, small animals and plants were trapped within the resin produced by ancient tropical algaroba trees. As the millennia passed, the resin solidified, perfectly fossilizing all ensnared within it. This fossilized resin, also known as amber, provides a unique opportunity to examine extinct organisms. The husband-and-wife Poinars (The Quest for Life in Amber; he's an entomologist at Oregon State University; she's an electron microscopist) specialize in studying the extinct organisms trapped in amber. Using data gathered by surveying a large collection of amber-embedded fossils from the Dominican Republic, they have been able to reconstruct the tropical forest ecosystem that dominated the island of Hispaniola 15 million to 45 million years ago. The Poinars' research proves "the long-term stability of host-parasite, predatory-prey and symbiotic associations" and "demonstrates how important past climactic patterns are in determining the present distribution of plants and animals." Though their prose can be overly academic (with the exception of the imaginative prologue), their descriptions of the interactions among the ancient biota are captivating. The text is richly complemented by 190 photographs and drawings by the authors, many depicting insects frozen in time. (July)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 292 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (November 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691057281
• ISBN-13: 978-0691057286
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,401,542 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bugs, Plants, Frogs in Sap Tip Us to Primeval Jungle, October 17, 2004

By	Robert S. Newman "Bob Newman" (Marblehead, Massachusetts USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Millions of years ago, a meat-eating animal snuck through the primeval forest in what is now the Dominican Republic. Taking a short break in the shade of the towering canopy, it sat on some bamboo shoots which broke off in its fur. As the animal continued on its search for its next meal, the shoots began to irritate it. Growling (as I imagine), it rubbed up against an algarrobo tree. Some of the irritating plant fell out, along with one or two of the animal's hairs. These things fell into some resin or sap which exuded from the tree. The sap preserved them perfectly. Later the large drop of sap fell to the ground, was covered by debris which turned to earth, burying the sap completely. It lay there for a million or more years, then the ocean rose, taking the object to the bottom, where it was polished or preserved for more millions of years. Finally, due to the tectonic movements of the earth's plates, the ocean bottom where the (now) amber lay rose up into the mountains of an island. When Europeans arrived there in the tiny fragment of time known as "history" in this whole unbelievable span, they dug out the amber and found the preserved proof of that one moment in an animal's activities a possible 25 million years ago !

Poinar and Poinar have created a fascinating scientific work with their reconstruction of what the forest of that epoch looked like. Using the thousands of examples of plants, seeds, petals, leaves, pollen, insects, and frogs or lizards that fell into the tree sap and were preserved like time capsules, they describe the ancient jungle long before any man trod this earth. They rely on the principle of behaviorial fixity-that is, the idea that species that fill certain ecological niches today did so in the past as well. They describe dozens of strange creatures, mostly insects (because they were abundant and small enough to get trapped often) that inhabit today's tropical forests as well as those in the past. The majority of the book is devoted to describing as many organisms as possible with an enormous number of black and white photographs and line drawings to help your imagination. They also have a whole section of color photographs of the actual amber pieces. At the end there is a short reconstruction (or summary) of the whole vanished forest as well as an interesting discussion of climatic change and the reason for the disappearance of many species between that time and the present. Not being a person with a scientific background, I found all these things excitingly different from my usual reading fare, but the language used-apart from having to deal with such terms as homozygotic, depurination, dehiscent, and phytotelmata, which don't exactly roll off my tongue-is understandable by any educated lay reader. I found THE AMBER FOREST one of the most fascinating books of science that I have ever read and one of the best books in any field that I've read recently. If learning about the symbiosis of plants and insects, parasites and hosts, ants and fungus, in fact all the biological world of a long-gone jungle, has any appeal to you, don't miss this work.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bob Newman's review explains everything, September 22, 2007

By	Ryan M. Parr "Estranged Erudite" (D/FW, TX USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Amber Forest: A Reconstruction of a Vanished World. (Hardcover)

This is a phenomenal book which will present a very thorough, and brilliant, "lecture" all in a single book. The hard bound edition is beautiful, and is a book I will probably never sell, it is an excellent book!

It really is like sitting through an Ivy League lecture, though it isn't something many will find too difficult to follow (I hope. . .) It is a rare find.

I should note, most people overlook the hardbound editions, which are often cheaper than paperback :)

2 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Amber, February 24, 2001

By	Belle - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Amber Forest: A Reconstruction of a Vanished World. (Hardcover)

This book tells of the author's adventures looking for amber as well as facts about it.