A101 DR6710 Superb Hymenaea Leaf in Dominican Amber

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a Superb complete Hymenaea Leaf with visible signs of insect tracking damage nicely preserved and nicely displayed in an authentic Dominican Amber Gemstone DR6710 $500.00 No Reserve a Superb complete Hymenaea Leaf with visible signs of insect tracking damage nicely preserved and nicely displayed in an authentic Dominican Amber Gemstone DR6710 $500.00 No Reserve Description This is an auction for a Superb complete Hymenaea Leaf with visible signs of insect tracking damage nicely preserved and nicely displayed in an authentic Dominican Amber Gemstone . This specimen was excavated in the La Toca amber mine in early winter of 2006. DR6710 $500.00 No Reserve This is an auction for a rare Hymenaea Leaf with visible signs of 'chewing' by leaf mining insects. T are basically three types of insect predation visible on leaves preserved in Dominican amber depending on which types of insects were feeding on the leaves. T are leaves which have their sides chewed, and t are leaves with small circular holes through them, and t are leaves with 'mined' trackways. Hymenaea leaves are from the Algarrobo tree which is the source tree of the Dominican amber. The Algarrobo (or Algorrobo) tree was probably the dominant tree in the prehistoric Dominican rainforest. From Grimaldi 1996 - " Mexican and Dominican ambers were both formed from extinct species of Hymenaea trees, although the only one yet described (definitively named) is Hymenaea protera from the Dominican Republic. Well before it was named, scientists ha discovered that this Dominican amber tree is more closely related to the one African member of the living species in this genus (H. verrucosa, a source of African copal) than to any New World species. The Mexican amber tree is apparently most closely related to the living H. courbaril, which is wide spread in southern Mexico and the Caribbean, all the way down through South America. Identifications of the source of the ambers are based on chemistry and on the whole and partial flowers and leaves in the amber. Dominican and Mexican deposits are approximately contemporaneous, having been formed from around the mid-Oligicene (about 30 million years ago) to the early Miocene ( about 20 million years ago). Very little basis exits for some claims that Dominican amber is 40 million years old. Leaves and the large, hard seedpods are studded with tiny pockets of resin, which chemically defend the tree from caterpillars, weevils, and other herbivorous insects." From Poinar 1992 - "The similarity of H. protera in Dominican amber to H. verrucosa now restricted to East Africa, raises some interesting questions about the origin and geographical distribution of the genus Hymenaea. Heuber and Langenheim (1986) consider the petals and ovaries of H. verrucosa and H. oblongifolia as relatively primitive, and suggest that this portion of the genus Hymenaea (section Trachylobium) had an African origin. They propose that fruits from this stock drifted from West Africa to the east coast of Brazil and the Antilles by way of the south equatorial current. the one remaining East African species, H. verrucosa, is then considered a relict of an earlier Pan-African distribution of this and other species". A fairly good hypothesis we believe considering how many tropical storms and hurricanes spin across the Atlantic from Easte... read more

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