Levon Biss microsculpture.net
SOME 50 million years ago, an ant was foraging on a tree trunk growing on what is now the Baltic coast of Russia. A trickle of resin oozing from the tree trapped the insect, killing it and sealing it off from the world. And yet here it is.
Fossils invoke a sense of wonder because they connect us physically to the distant past. When organisms are trapped in tree resin and fossilised as it turns to amber, this dehydrates their body and drastically slows decomposition, forming beautifully preserved specimens. But the captured organisms, literal time capsules, have never been so…
