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Attenborough in Paradise Amber Time Machine
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00:27There is a substance so strange
00:29and so beautiful
00:31that whenever people encountered it
00:33they thought they'd found something magical.
00:40And its magic is real
00:42because this material has traveled through time
00:45bringing with it passengers from the distant past
00:48that have wonderful tales to tell.
01:01This extraordinary substance
01:03has fascinated me since I first held a piece
01:07this piece when I was 12.
01:22My first piece of amber
01:24arrived in a very unexpected way.
01:28In 1938, during the build-up to the Second World War
01:31my parents helped some of the many children
01:34fleeing from Germany.
01:36They had left their families behind
01:38and were allowed to bring almost nothing with them.
01:44I remember one girl in particular.
01:47Her name was Marianne.
01:49She was 12, about the same age as I was
01:51and she came from a city on the Baltic coast
01:54where her father was a doctor.
01:57He had given her one small but precious thing
02:00as a sign of his thanks to whoever it was
02:03who was going to look after his daughter.
02:06And this is it.
02:09It felt surprisingly warm and light in my hand
02:12but what made me fall in love with amber
02:15was what I discovered inside it.
02:19I found something miraculous.
02:22There were insects preserved in astonishing detail.
02:26I burned with questions.
02:29What sort of world were they from?
02:32They must have lived a long time ago
02:35but how long?
02:40Years later, my brother Richard
02:42would play a scientist in a movie
02:44which made amber famous the world over.
02:49Welcome to Jurassic Park.
02:53Richard's character extracted DNA
02:55from dinosaurs' blood trapped in amber
02:58and with it brought dinosaurs back to life.
03:01Could that ever be done?
03:04How do you do this?
03:07I'll show you.
03:13I started my journey with the amber time machine
03:16by taking Marianne's gift back to where it came from
03:20to the shores of the Baltic Sea.
03:23The amber comes from rocks on the seabed
03:26some distance out from the coast
03:27but people don't find it
03:29until it washes up on the shore.
03:32Little bits like this are quite common.
03:35Sometimes, if you're lucky,
03:37particularly after a storm,
03:38you can find bigger bits.
03:40Some even have barnacles
03:43still attached to them.
03:45People have been collecting such bits
03:47for thousands of years
03:49but had no idea
03:50how amber originated.
03:52Some said
03:53it was solidified sunshine.
03:56Some,
03:57that it was
03:58the tears
03:59of the gods.
04:01And then,
04:02around the year
04:0377 AD,
04:06a great
04:07Roman
04:07naturalist,
04:09Pliny the Elder,
04:11conducted
04:11a simple
04:12experiment.
04:13He did this.
04:23The smell
04:26unmistakable.
04:27Pine
04:28resin.
04:33Several types of plants,
04:35among them conifers,
04:37seal any wound
04:38inflicted by storms
04:39or insect attack
04:40by producing
04:42a sticky resin
04:43which oozes out
04:44from them.
04:47And because it continues
04:49to gently flow around
04:51whatever it traps,
04:52it can preserve creatures
04:54in the finest detail.
04:58As the resin hardens
05:00around its captives,
05:01they become suspended
05:03in time.
05:15of course,
05:16many creatures
05:17are fossilized
05:18in rock,
05:19like this
05:20small flatfish,
05:21for example.
05:22It's a kind of ray.
05:24It was squashed,
05:26its soft parts
05:27decayed,
05:28even its little spines
05:30turned into rock.
05:31But amber
05:33preserves creatures
05:35in a quite
05:36different fashion.
05:37When this little bee
05:39touched this drop
05:41of resin,
05:42she was caught
05:42by its stickiness
05:44and she was instantly
05:45and perfectly preserved
05:46in three dimensions.
05:50These eyes
05:51saw a world
05:52which existed
05:53long before
05:54mankind evolved.
05:55She scented flowers
05:57before the first
05:58human being
05:58ever smelled one.
06:00and I can even tell
06:01that she was
06:02working hard
06:03when she died
06:04by the bundles
06:05of cargo
06:05on her hind legs.
06:08It's hard to imagine
06:10a more perfect
06:10time capsule
06:11than this.
06:12This little bee
06:13has been trapped
06:14in there
06:15for literally
06:16millions
06:17of years.
06:20Amber's ability
06:21to travel through time
06:22can take us back
06:23into more recent history.
06:26Our history.
06:32Stonehenge
06:33is one of the earliest
06:34man-made structures
06:35in the world.
06:38These stones
06:39have been standing here
06:40for something like
06:41three and a half
06:42thousand years
06:43and we know
06:44that even then
06:45the people who erected
06:46them treasured amber.
06:48But they weren't the first.
06:50It was considered
06:51to be precious
06:51way back
06:52in the Stone Age.
06:53and this
06:55may be why.
06:58When you scrape
07:00its rough surface
07:01with a flint blade
07:02perhaps
07:02you quickly reveal
07:04the wonderful
07:05golden colour
07:06inside.
07:13It's quite magical.
07:16Stone Age people
07:18also carved bone
07:20and stone
07:20in order to make tools.
07:22But amber
07:23was different.
07:25It seemed to have
07:25had no practical use.
07:28So they must have
07:29valued it
07:30for some other reason.
07:35The carvings
07:36they made
07:36around 10,000 years ago
07:38give us an idea
07:39of how they viewed
07:40the world
07:41and in particular
07:42which animals
07:43mattered most to them.
07:58imagine the value
07:59of amber
07:59to a Stone Age hunter
08:01who believed
08:02that capturing
08:03an animal's spirit
08:04by carving it in amber
08:05made the animal
08:06itself easier to hunt.
08:18The people
08:19who built
08:19the great stone circle
08:21at Stonehenge
08:22lived in the Bronze Age
08:23several thousand years later
08:25but they too
08:26treasured amber.
08:32None
08:33but the wealthiest
08:34of them
08:34could afford
08:35a material
08:36as rare
08:36as this.
08:39Once
08:40there were
08:40a thousand beads
08:41in this necklace.
08:42over 3,000 years
08:44their surfaces
08:45have become
08:46opaque
08:46and crumbly
08:47but when they were
08:48new
08:49and freshly
08:50polished
08:50and glowing
08:51it must have been
08:52a wondrous piece
08:53of jewellery.
08:55One woman's grave
08:57contained
08:57a rather more
08:58mysterious object
09:00a disc
09:01of amber
09:02now browned
09:03with age
09:03encircled
09:04by gold.
09:06It was certainly
09:06a remarkable piece
09:08of personal decoration
09:09but maybe
09:11it had a rather
09:12deeper significance.
09:21The sun
09:22is central
09:24to our understanding
09:25of Stonehenge.
09:26The monument
09:27may have been used
09:27as a solar calendar
09:29and it may be
09:30that its builders
09:31treasured amber
09:32because it captured
09:34the warmth
09:35and the light
09:35of the sun.
09:40it may or may not
09:42have been considered
09:43magical in prehistoric
09:44Britain
09:44but it was most
09:45certainly rare
09:47for it came
09:48from far away.
09:57This is the Baltic city
09:58of Gnansk
09:59in Poland.
10:04The jewellery worn
10:06by the people
10:07of Stonehenge
10:07and buried with them
10:09came from around here.
10:10It's evidence
10:11of one of the world's
10:13first long distance
10:14trade routes.
10:16But what brought
10:17the big boom
10:19in amber
10:20was the rise
10:21of imperial Rome.
10:25The Romans
10:26bought it
10:26for prestige.
10:28Amber carvings
10:29cost more
10:29than the best slaves
10:30and even the emperor
10:32Nero treasured it.
10:33He decorated
10:34the Colosseum
10:35with tons of it
10:36to show how
10:37unbelievably wealthy
10:38he was.
10:42So Baltic amber
10:44can take us back
10:45at least 10,000 years
10:46into our own past
10:48but it reaches back
10:50much further than that.
10:54To find out
10:55how far
10:56I went
10:57to one of the Gnansk
10:58workshops
10:59where amber jewellery
11:00is made
11:01to meet
11:01Elspieta Sontag.
11:05Very thin.
11:06It's more
11:07probably with
11:08inclusion inside.
11:15Elspieta
11:15is a biologist
11:16who comes here
11:17to look for
11:18inclusions
11:19animals and plants
11:20trapped in the amber.
11:24It takes
11:25a practiced eye
11:26to search through
11:27as much raw amber
11:28as this
11:29and I was delighted
11:30to get a lesson
11:31from the expert.
11:33How do I start?
11:35I mean there are
11:35a million pieces
11:36alright
11:37a thousand pieces
11:37what is there
11:39a particular colour
11:39I should look for?
11:41Sometimes colour
11:42yes
11:42because white
11:44and
11:45and
11:45milky
11:46is without
11:47inclusion.
11:48Are they good?
11:48No.
11:49That's bad.
11:49Not good.
11:50It's better.
11:51So we don't want
11:51I'll listen to that.
11:52I avoid
11:53that kind of pieces.
11:54I'm looking for
11:55transparent.
11:58Would that one
11:59be any good?
12:00Yes
12:01I think yes.
12:02We can split it
12:04for example.
12:06Really?
12:06No.
12:06Yes.
12:08And?
12:09And maybe
12:11something is inside.
12:13How many
12:14pieces do you look at
12:16before you find something?
12:17Oh
12:17about
12:18twenty.
12:20Twenty.
12:21Eleven.
12:23Not good.
12:24Shape is not good.
12:25Why is the wrong shape?
12:27Twelve.
12:27Twelve.
12:28Next one.
12:32Thirteen.
12:33Spit?
12:35Yes.
12:37It's got a lot
12:38of bubbles.
12:40Fourteen.
12:41Wow.
12:42No.
12:43My friend.
12:45Oh.
12:46No.
12:47No.
12:47Maybe.
12:51Fifteen.
12:53Nothing.
13:00Yes, I think so.
13:02Sixteen.
13:03It's a mosquito.
13:05No, mosquito.
13:06Midges.
13:06Oh, but this is beautiful.
13:10The midge looks as though it took off from its twig only yesterday.
13:14But amazingly, it has been frozen in flight for around 40 million years.
13:25So, what about the creatures in my piece?
13:30What exactly were they?
13:34I could see them clearly, for Elspieta's microscope had a projection screen.
13:39Ah, well, that's an old friend, because it's quite big and it's near the surface and I've
13:46known it for a long time.
13:47And so it's a fly.
13:48But what kind of a fly?
13:50It's a long-legged fly.
13:53A long-legged fly?
13:55Yes.
13:55And what part of the forest do they live?
13:58Low on the forest.
14:00Sometimes sit on the bark.
14:03So, the likelihood is then that this fly, and therefore this piece of amber, this gum,
14:09this resin, was low down on the tree?
14:11Low down on the floor.
14:12Okay, what else is there?
14:14With her powerful microscope, Elspieta was exploring far deeper into my amber than I had
14:20been able to do.
14:21And there she found another fly, a fungus gnat.
14:25It must have died searching for rotten wood, for that is where it lays its eggs.
14:32Then Elspieta found an aphid.
14:36And right above it, an ant.
14:40Perhaps it had fallen together from a leaf where they were feeding.
14:44I think that's a fantastic picture.
14:46I mean, it's deep in the amber, I know, because I've never seen it like this before.
14:52But the last animal she found was the most surprising.
14:58Ah, what a monster.
15:00What is it?
15:01There is a mite.
15:02A mite?
15:03Yes.
15:04Very small monster.
15:07Yes.
15:08And that's tiny though, isn't it?
15:10How big is that?
15:11About half a millimeter.
15:14Half a millimeter.
15:15I've never seen it before.
15:16So, we've got a whole community.
15:18And we know that they all live together because they all died together in my one piece of amber.
15:25And that alone has given us a whole rounded picture of a tiny little ecosystem at the bottom of a
15:33tree 40 million years ago.
15:42It had taken me more than 60 years to find and identify all the animals inside my amber.
15:49And seeing them together had given me something more, a glimpse of their world.
15:55By comparing many amber animals to modern forms, scientists like Elspieta are sure that the forest they inhabited was a
16:03temperate one.
16:05But how broad a picture can these time travellers give us?
16:08Could it encompass a whole forest or even a whole continent?
16:15Well, in the 1960s, on a Caribbean mountainside, science discovered a new source of amber, which seemed perfectly suited to
16:24answer those questions.
16:27I had a chance to visit it 15 years ago.
16:31I hoped that for the first time, I myself might collect some amber.
16:41Here, in the Dominican Republic, amber is mined.
16:45And by dating the mudstones that contain it, we can tell that it's about 20 million years old, rather younger
16:52than Baltic amber.
17:04Picking a piece of amber from the mudstones in which it has lain for so long was hugely exciting.
17:12I bought a small collection back home with me.
17:16So, what kind of forest did this amber come from?
17:19Well, thanks to some remarkable detective work, we can answer that question in amazing detail.
17:27In this piece, there's a leaf from the plants that produced the amber.
17:40And this is what those plants looked like.
17:43They were giant bean trees.
17:45But what matters most about them is not what they looked like, but where they grew.
17:51They were tropical.
18:00Scientists had long imagined that the ancient tropical forests contained a vast diversity of life.
18:07But very few fossilized traces had ever been found, until they discovered these.
18:23Dominican amber preserves such a huge variety of animals and plants with such perfection that it inspired two scientists, George
18:32and Roberta Poynar, to try something that had previously been thought impossible.
18:39In the same way that Elspieta reconstructed the world around a single Baltic tree, they started to use these tiny
18:47fossils to bring a whole tropical forest back to life.
18:53I had found a piece which contained a little bee.
18:57She must have been familiar with many of the plants in that forest.
19:01Indeed, she depended on them.
19:03So, based on the Poynar's findings, and with a little bit of amber magic, we can follow her back home.
19:26This tiny flower shows that the amber trees were not the only giants reaching up into the forest canopy.
19:33It belonged to a sea bow, whose great trunk is supported by wide buttress roots.
19:43But the commonest flowers of all came from a different tree, the Nazareno.
19:53It seems likely that these trees dominated the forest canopy.
19:59When one of these giants fell, it would have opened up a light gap, which other, faster-growing plants could
20:05fill, plants like palms.
20:08And here are their flowers, confirming that palms were another key element of that forest.
20:18So, we have built up a picture of what part of the forest was like, and even identified some of
20:24the flowers which might have tempted my bee.
20:27But I don't think she died collecting nectar.
20:30She was searching the forest for something else.
20:34Remember those bundles on her back legs?
20:36They are clues to what she was after.
20:41She was collecting resin.
20:43And not just any resin, but resin from the amber trees themselves.
20:48And that was a very dangerous thing to do.
20:53She was a stingless bee, very skilled at handling resin.
20:57Even so, there was a real chance that while collecting it, a bee might get stuck.
21:06Stimless bees are among the most common animals trapped in Dominican amber.
21:11Why did they take the risk?
21:22Resin is very valuable to these bees.
21:31It contains antibiotics, which disinfect the wounds in the bark of the trees from which it oozes.
21:41By bringing it here into the nests, the bees protect their developing young from infection.
21:50So now we know exactly what this little bee was doing in that forest 20 million years ago.
21:56This piece of amber has not only trapped her body, it's also caught her behaviour.
22:03And we know from other pieces of amber, too, that she had enemies.
22:13This is an assassin bug.
22:17It hunts stingless bees, and their addiction to resin makes it easy for it to find them.
22:32The bug can't move swiftly enough to snatch a bee from mid-air, but it's strong enough to pull off
22:39strands of resin.
22:46With these sticky gloves, it can hold on to any bee which touches them.
22:55It's using resin to set a trap.
23:19Now the assassin stabs its dagger-like mouthparts into a weak point behind the bee's head and injects its saliva,
23:28paralysing the bee.
23:30As she dies, she releases a pheromone, a scent calling for help, which normally rallies other bees to defend the
23:38nest.
23:38And that entices them into the assassin's reach.
23:50But one assassin lost its grip, and now lies in amber, together with its victim.
24:01Once small animals like this were in the resin's grip, they were as doomed as flies on flies.
24:09But even so, amber sometimes contains animals that normally would never go near it.
24:16How can George Poinar explain his next discovery?
24:22It was an amber tadpole.
24:27It couldn't have come into contact with resin underwater.
24:30Yet, when he looked further, he found other pond animals, a young marsh beetle, even a diving beetle.
24:41The challenge was to explain how they had found their way into a flow of resin on the trunk of
24:48a tree.
24:51This is a poison dart frog.
24:56She's only half the size of your thumb, and remarkably, she's carrying a tadpole on her back.
25:07She moves in a very determined and purposeful way, and starts to climb a tree.
25:20These are what she's looking for, plants that collect water, called tank bromeliads.
25:29No one has yet found a piece of a bromeliad in amber, but we know they were there because there
25:34are amber damselflies,
25:35of a kind which today lays its eggs between the tightly packed leaves of bromeliads.
25:47She's reached a branch.
25:50Her tadpole will soon have a nursery.
26:02She lowers her rear end into the bromeliads pond.
26:18Other animals also lived in these tiny ponds.
26:26Up here, they may have been safe from predators, but not, it seems, from resin.
26:34So, bromeliads held tiny, complete worlds high up above the ground.
26:41But even so, they probably didn't contain enough food to sustain a fast-growing tadpole.
26:48What, then, did it eat?
26:51Amazingly, the piece of amber that held the tadpole also contained the answer.
27:03Poison dart frogs are very attentive parents.
27:07Every few days, the tadpole's mother climbs back up the tree to the bromeliad to care for her youngster.
27:22She's laying an egg.
27:25That's what the other object was in the amber.
27:28These eggs are sterile and don't grow into frogs.
27:31They're food.
27:34But occasionally, these little worlds up in the branches were shattered.
27:39Ow!
27:41Ow!
27:42Ow!
27:45Ow!
27:45Ow!
27:45Ow!
27:46Ow!
27:50Ow!
27:51At least one falling tadpole came to a sticky end.
28:01Who would have thought that amber could reveal such intimate details of life in tiny ponds high up in such
28:08trees as these?
28:12But what about the bigger animals of the forest?
28:15Amber surely can't tell us anything about the presence or absence of these.
28:21Or can it?
28:27Remarkably, amber does contain evidence of one such creature, thanks to some very oddly shaped seeds.
28:46These are the seeds of a kind of bamboo.
28:49The hooks on them get stuck in the hairs of animals so that the seeds travel with them and so
28:55are dispersed.
28:57But what sort of animals carried these seeds?
29:07Well, sometimes such seeds have hairs still attached to them, and the only animals with hairs are mammals.
29:17There were certainly a number of mammals around 20 million years ago, but can these hairs help us to be
29:23a little more specific as to which mammals were here?
29:31They can.
29:33They can.
29:34The shape of the scales on the surface of hairs there is.
29:38And George Poinar used them to narrow down the possibilities.
29:43They came from some kind of carnivore.
29:49It seems there were big cats in the ancient forests.
29:56Perhaps they even hunted the ancestors of modern koatis.
30:02They were quite a bit of a kind of dirtyogoets, and that's a little bit like this.
30:12But, go away.
30:14They do want to bury them...
30:14They have those in their own things.
30:16They're only overexÊing.
30:17The grass, they have been damaged.
30:17How are they đang inlings?
30:18I don't know why.
30:18The grass isquela.
30:23They're soföring about them.
30:26This floor is called the grass.
30:26They have to feed on the ground, and I hope they're hungry.
30:28They have to feed on trees.
30:38So, that's one more animal that I know that lived in that forest.
30:43But what about organisms for which there is not even a hair to serve as evidence?
30:50Amber really is astonishing,
30:52because as well as carrying animals' bodies through time,
30:56it can bring clues to their relationships.
30:59And that is what makes me certain
31:01that the forest contained enormous fig trees like this,
31:05although no trace of such a tree has yet been found in amber.
31:10Let me explain.
31:13George Poinar found the crucial evidence.
31:18Exhibit A. A minute wasp.
31:25This wasp proves that the forest had figs.
31:28But to find out what makes it such a conclusive witness,
31:31we need to see what goes on today inside the figs themselves.
31:40Although they look like fruit,
31:42figs are really containers for the tree's flowers and its developing seeds.
31:51But some also house wasps.
31:55Fig wasps spend almost all their lives inside figs, which are sealed.
32:00So nothing but a fig wasp can collect their pollen.
32:06And that is how the wasps repay the fig trees for providing their nursery,
32:12by distributing their pollen.
32:18These two organisms have come to rely on each other so closely
32:22that it's impossible for one to exist without the other.
32:26That is why a single wasp can guarantee that the forest contained fig trees.
32:35The partnership between figs and wasps is one of the most intimate in the whole of nature.
32:40But that piece of amber had something else to reveal.
32:44Something that was rather more sinister.
32:48The rear end of the wasp is surrounded by minute nematode worms.
32:58As the wasps emerge inside a fig, so do these nematodes.
33:03Each has just a few minutes to find a wasp and burrow into its body before it leaves the fig.
33:10But these are not conventional parasites.
33:12The only thing they will take from the wasps is a free ride to the next fig.
33:19Only amber could have preserved such minute details and with them revealed an extraordinary fact.
33:27The relationship between the forest fig trees, their wasps and worms that we know today,
33:33clearly existed 20 million years ago.
33:39Amber again and again demonstrates this constancy.
33:50It looks like a death scene, a scale insect in the jaws of a predatory ant.
34:01But the truth is very different.
34:04Scale insects drink the sap of plants, but this takes time.
34:09Predators would soon pick them off if it wasn't for the teams of ant bodyguards that protect them.
34:15And in exchange, the ants receive a share of the sap.
34:23By providing ants with food that they can't otherwise reach, the scale insects have made themselves indispensable.
34:30This relationship was so important that, far from eating her captive, this queen ant was gently carrying it away so
34:38it would set up a new colony beside her own.
34:45And for 20 million years, neither partner has had any reason to change.
34:51What does this astonishing absence of change imply?
34:56If conditions had altered radically, many of these complex relationships would have disappeared.
35:01So their presence tells us that tropical forests must have existed largely unchanged for at least 20 million years.
35:13But now George Poinar has travelled back even further in time.
35:18One of his latest finds in Dominican amber takes us back not just 20 million years, but 150 million.
35:27For it has implications about the Earth's geological history.
35:32And this startling new evidence comes from a single ant.
35:39I've come across its modern relatives myself.
35:42And their behaviour can tell us something unexpected about the Dominican amber forest.
35:49They're honeypot ants, whose workers have become jars in which the colony stores honey to help it through times when
35:56liquid and nectar are scarce in the dry season.
36:01So this amber honeypot ant suggests that the ancient forest also had a dry season.
36:08And if the modern ants are anything to go by, then it lasted around three to four months.
36:13So now amber can tell us how often it rained 20 million years ago.
36:19But it's also evidence of an event that occurred even farther back in time.
36:24Because the living honeypot ants I found don't occur in the Dominican Republic or even in South America.
36:32They live in Australia.
36:36So these little ants are evidence not only of climate, but the fact that once Australia and South America were
36:45joined together in one super continent.
36:48Who would have thought that a single ant could tell us so much?
36:57The amber time machine could hardly illuminate a more global event than the drift of continents.
37:03But it can also take us to the opposite extreme.
37:07What surprises might we find inside an amber animal?
37:12Dr. David Grimaldi of the American Museum of Natural History is especially interested in lizards.
37:20These anolis lizards are very territorial and the males take great risks to secure a patch of bark for themselves.
37:34They spend a lot of time displaying aggressively to one another, doing press-ups and erecting their throat flaps.
37:45And sometimes they fall.
37:59A few have achieved fame and immortality in amber.
38:05But such specimens are very rare.
38:08And, not surprisingly, a lizard should be strong enough to unstick itself from a flow of resin.
38:14But some did not.
38:16And that puzzled David Grimaldi.
38:20He wondered whether they could be as well preserved inside as they were outside.
38:26Could he actually look inside an amber lizard?
38:29He turned to the latest high-tech scanners.
38:33These are scans that use very high-intensity x-rays that are too high for medical purposes.
38:40And we have incredible detail in any view that we want.
38:46This scan of a gecko's head shows the finest details of its skull and even its teeth.
38:54Amber's preservation is clearly more than skin deep.
38:57But nothing in this scan could explain why this gecko was trapped.
39:07So David Grimaldi turned to another gecko and looked at its whole body, this time with conventional x-rays.
39:16The x-rays revealed that the bones are beautifully preserved.
39:19Bones of the skull, delicate little toe bones, bones of the legs, and even individual vertebrae are revealed.
39:27But from the jumble of bones, it's clear that the gecko's back was broken.
39:33It had probably been picked up and dropped, perhaps by a bird of prey.
39:36It didn't escape from the resin because when it hit it, it was already dead.
39:44As researchers started finding even smaller internal details preserved by amber, they began to ask themselves something almost unthinkable.
39:53Could amber have preserved molecular structures inside an animal, perhaps even its DNA?
40:00Some people even imagined that such DNA could bring monsters back to life.
40:06And look where that got us.
40:17But there are no remains of dinosaurs in amber.
40:20Surely their DNA is beyond our reach.
40:25The Poinars dared to wonder if that was so.
40:28The story begins 20 years ago, when Roberta first focused an electron microscope on an amber animal.
40:35Inside a fungus gnat, like the one in my piece of Baltic amber, she discovered something quite amazing.
40:42It's like a miracle.
40:44Every once in a while in your life you witness something that's just too spectacular for words.
40:51And this was one of the times.
40:54The Poinars had found 40 million year old cells, and more than that, even the minute structures inside the cells
41:03were clear to see.
41:05We were kind of flabbergasted that it was possible to have such a degree of preservation after such a long
41:12time.
41:13And so I, you know, zoomed on up to a higher magnification, and just was amazed to see that there
41:20were nuclei with bits of chromatin in the nucleus.
41:25And that is the step that led us to believe that DNA was there in the cell and could perhaps
41:31be pulled out and looked at.
41:34It was an astonishing discovery. The prospect of finding such ancient DNA electrified the scientific community.
41:44And Hollywood wasn't far behind.
41:48The storyline of Jurassic Park is very ingenious. My brother, who played the scientist, didn't actually need to find bits
41:56of dinosaur in amber.
41:58Nature had already extracted their DNA in blood cells and preserved it inside an amber mosquito.
42:07But that's pure fiction, isn't it?
42:11Surely it's impossible to recover DNA from any animal which lived in the distant past.
42:18Well, two teams set out to attempt exactly that.
42:22One of them included David Grimaldi.
42:25The other was set up by the Poinars.
42:29Both knew that their only chance of finding DNA was in the best preserved animals, so the Poinars chose to
42:36use my favourites, some stingless bees.
42:40While the other team decided to work on an amber termite.
42:46We had no expectations, at least I didn't, when we did the study.
42:50We did the extractions, we tried it, several of the extractions were unsuccessful.
42:55But then, both teams struck gold.
43:00Tissue extracted from the Poinars bees tested positive for DNA.
43:05And David Grimaldi got the same result from the termite.
43:09And our first reaction, particularly mine, was really disbelief.
43:13I was astounded at the possibility of DNA being preserved.
43:18It really was astounding.
43:20They were claiming to have recovered DNA from animals which had died 20 million years before.
43:26Not yet as old as the dinosaurs, but that's what a new team, including the Poinars, turned to next.
43:33And when they said what they had found, they caught the attention of the world.
43:38They had DNA from an insect older than T-Rex.
43:47So, could Hollywood possibly have got it right?
43:58We felt that the bringing back an entire dinosaur was not in the realm of possibility at this time.
44:05We were barraged with the common question, when are you going to clone extinct organisms?
44:11And we constantly had to repeat ourselves, we're not going to do that.
44:16But why not?
44:18If DNA is indeed preserved in amber, it is so chopped up, so fragmentary,
44:24that it's impossible to reconstruct the entire genome and then insert it into some surrogate organism
44:31and then have a complete resurrected extinct species out of that.
44:37That's absolutely impossible.
44:40As the blazed publicity surrounding the film faded,
44:45so other scientists tried to extract DNA from amber insects.
44:50And their results, when they were published, were bad news for the Poinars and David Grimaldi.
44:58None of them had found even a trace of ancient DNA.
45:07But what went wrong?
45:10What some of them found, in fact, were contaminant DNA sequences.
45:15And I have to admit, by that point, I was pretty much convinced that the original reports of DNA sequences
45:21in amber were of contaminant DNA.
45:24And some of the scientists that did make an attempt got all kinds of strange things.
45:31They would get fish DNA.
45:34Well, perhaps they had a tuna fish sandwich that day and were careless.
45:39Like most other researchers, David Grimaldi has changed his mind.
45:45But George Poinar is still confident that a few rare pieces of amber do contain DNA.
45:56And some insects certainly could have drunk the blood of dinosaurs.
46:02These sand flies have been preserved in amber for a hundred million years.
46:08Who knows what might be inside them?
46:11And that is why amber fascinates me so much.
46:14It has brought us so many surprises.
46:17The prospect of it preserving DNA brought dinosaurs back, at least in our imaginations.
46:25And the creatures that travelled in it through time bring us vivid snapshots of the Caribbean forest as it was
46:3220 million years ago.
46:36And my piece of Baltic amber, the first I ever owned, has preserved creatures with such perfection that they are
46:44still startlingly beautiful.
46:59What a journey amber has taken me on.
47:02And it all came from a gift from a small girl over 60 years ago.
47:11I imagine Marianne and her father found my piece of amber by walking along a Baltic shore just as thousands
47:21of people have done before them.
47:25It's magic may not extend to recreating a dinosaur, but for me, amber remains a substance of wonder.
47:35A time machine that can show us exactly how some things looked tens of millions of years ago.
48:23And it's still important for me, but it seems to be the same.
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