SciArt Magazine - All Issues | Page 8

Image of courtesy of Dr. Bo Wang. Hidden Gems For over a hundred years, locals in Fushun, a city in northeast China, have been finding stunning pieces of amber as they mined for fuel in the ground. The pieces have long been prized for their beauty, but their scientific value has never been fully appreciated. Though Bonn University’s Dr. Bo Wang has only just begun to analyze collections of Fushun amber, comparing them to pieces from the Baltic region almost 10,000 kilometers away, his team’s discovery of identical insect species in amber from the two regions has already revealed much about how—and how far—ancient species were able to migrate. 8 SciArt in America December 2014