Lebanon’s historic amber offers glimpse of a turning point in Earth’s historical past: NPR

It is a bright morning in Ain Daraa, a village in central Lebanon. A two-lane road winds its way through the hilly, rugged nation-state.

Danny Azar walks a few hundred feet down that road and stops at a stone ledge and prepares to climb the embankment.

In part, paleontologists choose such park sites – close to the road, similar to civilization – to avoid traversing long distances via foot.

“I’m a little lazy,” he says, smiling.

However, there is another reason: any such route cuts into the mountainside to create its layers.

“Let’s see,” Azar says, as he climbs onto the ledge. Then a few steps further, he steps onto the ledge and makes his way up the steep and serpentine slope. The air is cool and the sunny sky is deep blue.

Azar discovers amber along a rock face in the section of Hadath Al Joubeh in 2023.

Sibele Maqsood/Danny Azar

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Sibele Maqsood/Danny Azar

Azar, who holds a joint position at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology in China and the Lebanese College, stares at the dirt and rocks in front of him. It doesn’t seem like much – although he still knows what it is.

Before long the door stops. On some of the dirt and stones at his toes, he sees a work of amber no longer bigger than a grain of rice. Then he saw another, and another – bright yellow pieces that glittered in the daylight.

“This is one of 450 outcrops of amber that I discovered in this country,” says Azar, who started in Lebanon.

He points out that Lebanon is one of the few playgrounds where it is possible to examine an important era in the evolutionary history of our planet. About 130 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous, when dinosaurs still ruled, the area was transitioning from dominance by ferns and conifers to dominance by flowering vegetation. And that change – which could lead to the month on Earth as we know it – is sealed inside a trove of historical specimens that can be found on those rocky slopes that Azar knows so well.

Before Azar, researchers knew of only one amber outcrop in the south. However, they have discovered fossil tree resin almost far and wide – near the country’s famous cedars, in the mountains, or even along the Beirut River outside the capital.

“They call me the ‘Amber Man,'” he says.

Danny Azar owns a huge amber specimen, discovered in the section of Wadi Jezzine in 2015.

Simon Haddad/Courtesy Danny Azar

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Simon Haddad/Courtesy Danny Azar

Azar now lives in China, but because of how special the amber here is, he returns to Lebanon a few times each year to paint his garden. It describes the dawn of flowering plant life – an ecological shift that endlessly changed the months on Earth.

Every second, another earth

If another traveler sought advice from the Early Cretaceous, he would find an Earth that was extremely unfamiliar – and much more dangerous.

“There were hordes of dinosaurs and insects,” says Azar. “I don’t think I would be able to stand in that type of environment for even a minute because it could be very dangerous. It was a tropical climate with very humid, dense and dark forests.

That forest, full of ferns and conifers, was about to be more or less depleted of flowering vegetation. And it was the arrival of vegetation that transformed Earth into the planet we live in now. During this moment, there was an explosion of fresh houses of flora that were filled with pollen and nectar, which were laid like a buffet for the huge number of insects that moved in and diversified over the next millennium to devour it. Went.

“Everything was changing,” says Azar. “A lot of groups appeared during this period – bees and other pollinators. And even the beginnings of butterflies (and moths).” The vegetation provided the insects with food and fresh homes, and the insects began pollinating a lot of the vegetation – so those two groups of organisms evolved together.

That’s why there’s a layout of a snapshot of a planet in the Cretaceous to Amber transition – a moment between two worlds.

currently blonde windows

Not all objects of amber now in this outcropping at Ain Dara are small. Sibelle Maksoud, a geologist at the Lebanese College and Azar’s wife, is also gathering these days. And it’s got a little amber color the size of a golf ball.

Paleo-entomologist Marina Hakim (left), geologist Sibelle Maksoud, and paleontologist Danny Azar climb a slope in central Lebanon to look for historical amber inclusions.

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Ari Daniels/NPR

“This is a treasure,” she says, holding up the yellow globe. “Just imagine that after 130 million years you are the first person to touch this resin. So it’s a beautiful feeling. After this, we can wash it a little and we can examine under the microscope if you can see the worms inside.

Those treasures are made of the sticky resin that came out of wood during the Cretaceous, sometimes trapped by an insect or some plant material, buried, and – in a short time and under suitable conditions – turned into amber. used to go.

“It’s amazing because it’s so completely well preserved,” Azar says. “A piece of amber is a window into the past.”

Geologist Sibele Maqsood holds a bit of amber the size of a golf ball. “It’s a treasure,” she says.

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Ari Daniels/NPR

Azar has looked to this window again and again, learning about the countless amber ornaments collected from across Lebanon. This allows him to recreate the drama that unfolded on Earth during the Early Cretaceous – how flowering flora took over, and how insects enabled the coup.

For example, Azar recently found a unique mosquito working in 130-million-year-old amber. It was the oldest ever discovered, a mile from where he and Maqsood are based these days in Ain Dara. “And besides,” he adds, “this is a male with very functional oral organs for obtaining a blood meal.”

Nowadays there are no blood sucking male mosquitoes. That common and painful bite – which contributes to the spread of terrible diseases like malaria and dengue – is caused by pregnant women. That’s because as vegetation arrived in the Early Cretaceous, Azar says male mosquitoes likely changed their feeding behavior, breaking free from blood to feed on a different, more secure food source — nectar.

And this is just one fund among many. Azar shows a backlog of more than 500 pounds of amber nuggets that he has collected over the years. His work includes diverse publications covering historical flora, dinosaur tracks, and discoveries of fresh insect species, which Azar says will rewrite the textbooks.

As soon as the amber pieces are cleaned, they begin to shine.

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Ari Daniels/NPR

Then a couple of hours later, Azar, Maqsood and a worker have obtained a pound or two of amber.

“If we go to any outcrop anywhere else in the world, it would probably take you a whole day to find two or three pieces like this,” says Azar.

an underappreciated gift

Azar preserves the Palaeolithic wealth emerging from Lebanon.

“When you see all these discoveries in such a small country, it’s fantastic,” he says. “It’s a gift. It’s a gift.”

There is only one disease. Azar can’t get much from the rest of Lebanon to help him with those treasures.

“In China, they’ll build a museum there,” he says. “And in Europe, they’ll protect the land because they care about it. Here, I have been struggling for 20 years to get a natural history museum.

Azar says that everything he has won is guaranteed to be in vain. To them, those amber outcrops are a ruined legacy in a land shaken through war and corruption.

,“Since I was born in this country,” he laments, “there are always troubles there.”

Azar has clear public works duties on the management of outcroppings, which he has become aware of, although there is minimal enforcement of zoning regulations. It was Lebanon’s financial emergency that forced him to move to China, where he spends most of the year away from his community. And in this transit, he has not dared to bundle amber specimens to Mission South.

“It’s very dangerous,” he explains. “Unfortunately, we are bombed every day in the south of Lebanon. Why can’t we live peacefully and normally for a few years?”

Still, Azar wonders – and hopes – whether the museum he desires will be built to accommodate his bounty.

Azar’s collection also includes insects including beetles and butterflies.

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Ari Daniels/NPR

He doesn’t understand it yet, but today’s pile of yellow globes will yield a variety of Cretaceous insects, including a spider, a handful of biting mosquitoes and a male lacewing that has probably never been seen before. It’s a fresh specimen, adorned in amber, buried in the dust by the side of the road… ready to be plucked from a park with a deep and complex history.