What is the Age of Amber ?
Amber is an organic gem, Amber is a resin and derived from trees, which has been preserved and fossilized in sedimentary rocks. In terms of Earth’s history, the first resin-producing trees appeared relatively recently, and so the range of amber ages is correspondingly small.
Even so, the oldest amber dates from the Coal Measures in the Upper Carboniferous period about 320 Ma ago. However, this amber is not of gem quality, and most of the amber fashioned for jewellery is Tertiary in age. Amber recovered from the coastal regions of the Baltic Sea is 35–40 Ma old, and amber from the other main source for the jewellery trade, the Dominican Republic, comes from a wider range of horizons 15–40 Ma old. The oldest amber-containing insects occurs in sediments of Cretaceous age.