Beckerite

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Beckerite, natural form; Size: 54mm; Collection: Natural History Museum Mauritianum Altenburg.
Beckerite, natural form; Size: 37mm; Collection: Natural History Museum Mauritianum Altenburg.

Beckerite is a type of amber that was described by Ernst Pieszczek in 1880. Beckerite was found as an accessory component in Baltic amber (succinite) that was extracted from mining and washed up on the Baltic coasts. The name was given to Moritz Becker , the co-owner of the Stantien & Becker company , the first company in industrial amber mining in Samland .

Features of Beckerite

According to Ernst Pieszczek's description, this fossil brown resin forms “bulbous and teardrop-shaped, but also lamellar pieces of various sizes, which in part clearly reveal the previous state of the flowering. The lamellar, mostly smaller pieces often show clear longitudinal protrusions and depressions, which are perhaps imprints of the bark of the tree from which the resin escaped from time ago shiny and also gray-brown in color. ”It“ has an almost tough texture, so that it is difficult to powder. The powder is gray-brown in color. ”It was found to be almost insoluble in organic solvents and it does not contain succinic acid . The high ash content of 5.7% indicates a high level of contamination. Robert Caspary's description of a large number of plants and imprints in the “brown resin” arouses doubts as to whether he was exclusively dealing with the fossil resin that Ernst Pieszczek called beckerite.

Find areas

Since then, no new finds have been made from Samland. Follow-up examinations of specimens from several scientific collections using infrared spectroscopy led to the result that this specimen does not contain any aromatic compounds and that it is predominantly highly contaminated succinite. Obviously, the physical properties described by Ernst Pieszczek were not taken into account, especially the great toughness and the frequent wood marks.

New finds from the Bitterfeld amber deposit and from Niederlausitz only became known from 1986 . More than 260 pieces were recovered from the Bitterfeld amber deposit . The investigation using infrared spectroscopy revealed a high proportion of aromatic compounds , the fossil resin is a natural polystyrene . According to the Anderson & Grelling system , Beckerit belongs to class III.

Because of the different results of the investigation of the alleged original pieces of evidence from Samland, see above, the assumption arose that the bitterfeld resin with aromatic components could be Siegburgite and not Beckerite. Attempts to provide direct evidence by comparing the infrared spectra of the Siegburg and Bitterfeld resins failed because of the high proportion of foreign components in the Siegburg material. Since infrared spectra of pure resin substances are now available, it has been proven beyond doubt that the resin from Bitterfeld is not Siegburgite and that the deviating physical properties therefore also match.

A representative of the species-rich family of Hamamelidaceae ( witch hazel family ), perhaps a species of the genus Liquidambar ( amber trees ), was assumed to be the producer of the beckerite from Bitterfeld . On the basis of very similar pieces of resinified wood from layers of the Miocene of Niederlausitz, Liquidambaroxylon speciosum Felix, 1884, is assumed to be the producer of Beckerite.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ernst Pieszczek: About some new resin-like fossils of the East Prussian Samland . In: Archive of the Pharmacie - Journal of the German Pharmacists Association , Volume 14, Issue 6, Halle / Saale 1880, pages 433-436 (online)
  2. ↑ Robert Caspary: New fossil plants of the blue earth, ie the amber, the black resin and the brown resin . In: Writings of the physical-economic society in Königsberg , year 22, session reports, Königsberg 1881, pages 22–31 (online) .
  3. ^ CW Beck, JB Lambert, JS Frye: Beckerite . In: Physics and Chemistry of Minerals , Volume 13, Heidelberg 1986, pages 411-414.
  4. ↑ Barbara Kosmowska-Ceranowicz, Günter Krumbiegel: Geology and history of Bitterfeld amber and other fossil resins . In: Hallesches Jahrbuch für Geoswissenschaften , Volume 14, Gotha 1989, pages 1-25
  5. ^ Roland Fuhrmann, Rolf Borsdorf: The amber types of the Lower Miocene of Bitterfeld. In: Journal for Applied Geology , Volume 32, Berlin 1986, pages 309-316, PDF .
  6. ↑ a b Roland Fuhrmann: The bitterfield amber species. In: Mauritiana , Volume 21, Altenburg 2010, ISSN  0233-173X , pages 13-58, PDF .
  7. ↑ Ken B. Anderson, John C. Crelling: Amber, Resinite, and Fossil Resins . In: ACS Symposium . Series 617, Washington DC 1995,
  8. ↑ Günter Krumbiegel, Barbara Kosmowska-Ceranowicz: occurrence of Glessit, siegburgite and Krantzit tertiary Central Germany (Bitterfeld, Niederlausitz) (?) . In: Fundgrube , Volume 26, Issue 3, Berlin 1990, pages 78-81.
  9. ↑ Günter Krumbiegel, Barbara Kosmowska-Ceranowicz: Fossil Resins around Halle (Saale) in the collection of the Museum of the Geisel Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg . In: Scientific journal of the University of Halle , Volume XXXXI'92, Issue 6, Halle 1992, pages 5-35
  10. ↑ Andreas Gröschke: Lausitzer Bernstein - Part 1: The fossil resin of the tertiary sweetgum tree Liquidambaroxylon speciosum FELIX, 1884 . In: Natur und Landschaft in der Niederlausitz , issue 25, Cottbus 2005, pages 3–14.

Web links

Commons : Beckerite from Bitterfeld  - Collection of images, videos and audio files