The Wondrous Beauty of Myanmar Amber Hides a Very Dark Secret

There are many stories of ancient forested landscapes through which the dinosaurs lived. These fossils are part of a different story sometimes.

There is one instance in the country. The country has made a name for itself in the field of paleontology with amber specimen that are ethically or illegally obtained.

According to a new study, one of the most important papers in paleontology you'll read this year, research on fossils encased inMyanmar amber is booming, a direct result of ongoing violent conflicts in parts of the country where amber is mined

In the last few years, a lot of stunning amber has been obtained from the country. During the mid-Cretaceous, life flourished alongside the dinosaurs, thanks to the burnt-orange blobs of hardened treeResin.

Those finds have a price.

According to recent reports, the trade of lucrative amber and the fossils it often contains is fueling conflicts in the country.

"We already knew that the situation was bad through anecdotes and journalistic investigations, but our study finally puts the situation into perspective and shows just how bad the situation really is."

The analysis shows how much scientists have been exploiting the legal dilemma.

The export of fossil materials fromMyanmar has been banned. Because amber can be legally exported, there is a legal gray area.

In her email, Raja asked where the fossil end and the amber begin.

According to the new analysis, research on the fossils of the country is going well. Major political, legal, and economic events occurring at that time in the country were tracked by the researchers who scrutinized nearly 1,000 scientific papers published over the past 30 years.

Some paleontologists have questioned the study findings, arguing that the increase in research on the amber fossils is just a reflection of growing academic interest.

According to the study authors, the soaring number of papers on fossils is linked to the country's violent conflict and seriously deficient enforcement of national laws. Foreign paleontologists are beneficiaries.

"Myanmar amber is the starkest example of how loopholes in the law continue to be exploited, resulting in unethical work and the exclusion of local researchers," said Emma Dunne, co-lead author of the study.

The majority of the amber is mined in the conflict-ridden north of the country.

Due to the fact that the gemstones smuggled across the border into China are often sold in markets to private collectors and paleontologists, local scientists have little chance to study the ancient remains.

There have been no authors based in the country who have contributed to a scientific paper that describes a fossil.

The United States has published more papers on amber fossils than any other nation. The researchers say this is a reflection of the influx of amber into the Chinese market.

"What we observed here is an extreme form of parachute science where instead of fieldwork, amber specimen are obtained through commercial routes and are apparently not regulated according to national laws relating to fossils or gemstones," Raja, Dunne, and colleagues wrote.

The legacy of a dark colonial history that continues to be exploited today, and which warps our view of life on Earth, is parachute science.

Recent studies have shown how pervasive parachute science is in coral reef research and geoscience. Paleontology is no different.

"Documenting who is, or more precisely, which countries are, publishing onMyanmar amber allows us to clearly see that this same imbalance is extremely prevalent in this field of research."

Progress to curb unethical or illegal research practices in paleontology has been slow despite calls from paleontological societies for scientific journals not to publish papers on fossils.

The analysis found that only 2 out of 222 papers published since 2020 describe fossils inMyanmar amber in the proper way.

It's a wake-up call to some researchers, but it's also a reminder to other paleontologists that they need to improve their ethical standards.

The amber ofMyanmar is pretty. There are amazing fossils inside. Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh, got excited and wanted to study them when he read the study. No fossil is worth a human life.

There was a study published. The co-author was a paleontologist at the University of Mandalay.