Beautiful Amber Jewelry for Women

Amber is one of the many beautiful miracles of nature - beginning it's long journey as mere tree resin, which then becomes fossilised over millions of years. The oldest recorded amber found to date is known to have been formed some 320 million years ago!

Amber can be used for many different things, including perfume, some medicines, jewelry and ornaments. It ranges hugely in size, weight, colour and value. If you ever saw the film 'Jurassic Park', you will know that many pieces of amber still hold insects, beetles and other small animals/reptiles within them: a pocket-sized museum, which can be analysed by experts who can begin to understand different species and even complete eco systems that existed millions of years before man walked the earth.

There are around 160 different colours of amber - including green, yellow, brown, orange, red, near black, blue and clear, with the brown-honey coloured pieces of amber being the most common, and blue and clear pieces being the rarest and therefore the most valuable.

Amber can be found in many different parts of the world, though the majority is mined and extracted in Russia, and has been used as jewelry since the stone age - around 13,000 years ago! Whilst small pieces were at one time considered almost worthless, they are now heated and pressed together while hot and pliable to make pressed amber - which is used for many purposes.

If you have ever seen resin seeping from the bark of a tree, you only need to imagine that exact same process happening millions of years ago, and this resin then hardened, fossilised and became buried when the Earth changed beyond recognition from how it once was. Many pieces of amber are found in rivers, washed up from the sea beds onto shores, or can even be found in coal mines in places like New Zealand.

It is because these extraordinarily fascinating chunks of history were lost beneath the Earth's surface that they have remained in one piece, and are able to help scientists and palaeontologists reconstruct parts of ecosystems that no longer exist. Some have perfectly preserved creatures inside such as scorpions, ants, mosquitoes and spiders, and these hold a lot of value - both in terms of price and research. Some pieces also hold flowers from different time periods which, again, are now extinct, but are of considerable importance to anyone trying to piece together the fascinating history of planet Earth.

Palaeontologists generally are extremely grateful for the relatively scarce amount of amber that is found with insects that were trapped inside millions of years ago, as these creatures would otherwise not have been preserved, and no trace of their existence would be found. Therefore, from these rare pieces of amber, past ecosystems that became extinct before humans even walked the Earth can be learned about and reconstructed, to give us a better picture of what other species once existed on the planet.