Romanite

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Romanite is the name for a fossil resin predominantly Oligocene from the southern Carpathians in Romania .

Scientific research

The first references to Romanian amber in modern scientific literature come from the first half of the 19th century. The information from this time is often very imprecise and sometimes contradicts each other. At the end of the 19th century, Otto Helm was the first to scientifically investigate amber finds from Romania and determined physical and chemical differences to Baltic amber (succinite) . The differences found by Helm, which were later confirmed by numerous other investigations, consist in the somewhat low content of succinic acid in Romanite and its higher sulfur and carbon content . Furthermore, Romanite is mostly interspersed with numerous cracks and cracks and is darker in color than Baltic amber. Helm named the material available to him after the country of origin Romanite.

Location of the Buzau district , the main Romanite discovery area

Various locations of fossil resins from Romania were already known in Helm's time. In the course of the following decades, names such as Almaschite (from Piatra Neamț ), Moldovite Telegdite (from Săsciori , Alba district ) and Muntenite (from the Eocene deposit of Olanestidie) emerged from differences between the examined pieces, most of which have locally narrow deposits in Can be brought together and have only occasionally established themselves in the literature. 1875 a Bernsteinvarietät from Romania was from J. Baron Schrock Inger after the Austrian geologists Albrecht Schrauf as Schraufit designated (various localities, u. A. Vama, district Suceava ). Fossil resins found around the same time in the flysch zone of the Vienna Woods , which are chemically similar to those from Bukowina, have also entered the literature as schraufite.

Today far more than 300 locations of fossil resins are known in Romania. These also include formations in the Cretaceous and the Eocene. With the different ages of the amber found in Romania, there are also different formation conditions for the fossil resins, which are expressed in deviations in its chemical and physical properties. The term Romanite used by Helm, which naturally referred to the type of amber from which he had samples (about the location of which only inaccurate information is available), is therefore ambiguous, as it can identify both the type that Helm identified as also amber deposits in Romania in general. For this reason, Romanite has been used rather cautiously in the specialist literature in recent times as a term for fossil resins from Romania. In addition, some authors see Romanite as a diagenetically modified succinite.

The vast majority of the finds today come from the Oligocene layers in the flysch of the Eastern Carpathians, mainly in the Buzău area , with a focus on the area around Colti. In the lower section of this formation, the Kliwa sandstone, there is a sequence of layers of gray, sandy marl with thin layers of coal shale and lignite, in which Romanite is found, up to about 1.5 m thick. Relocated amber on younger deposits is washed out after heavy rainfall in some places and collected by locals.

Systematic promotion

Colti Amber Museum

Systematic mining of Romanian amber took place as early as the 1st and 2nd centuries BC. When Dacia was a Roman province. Archaeological findings suggest that amber from the Carpathian Mountains of Romania was already known in the late Neolithic and was processed into jewelry. Amber from Romania has been mentioned again and again in literature since the 16th century, so that a more or less systematic mining seems likely even before the 19th century.

The first historically well-documented attempts at mining in the flysch of the Southern Carpathians in the Buzău district go back to the period from 1828 to 1834. In the period from 1895 to 1936, the yield fluctuated between 5 kg and 400 kg per year, whereby these delivery rates only refer to Colti and the surrounding area and the sources give very different information on this (according to other sources 500 kg per year). In total, a little more than a ton was mined during this time. Among them were pieces with a weight of several kilograms. Mining continued sporadically for a few years from the mid-1930s until it came to a complete standstill in 1948. A temporarily contemplated resumption failed due to economic considerations. Today amber is only extracted there in small amounts on a private initiative.

The Colti Amber Museum provides a brief overview of amber mining, where large pieces of raw amber and amber work from the region can also be seen.

Botanical origin and organic inclusions

There are divergent views on the botanical origin of Romanite. Trees of the genera Abies ( firs ) and Pinus ( pines ), but also cypress plants ( sequoia trees ) and representatives of the Icacinaceae family will be discussed . Some well-preserved spiders , scorpions , Schnabelkerfe and beetles have been identified in organic inclusions, which are only present in small numbers .

Others

The largest known piece of Romanite weighing more than three kilograms is kept in the Mineralogical Museum of the University of Bucharest .

Amber from the Russian island of Sakhalin has properties that are almost identical to those of the Romanite from Romania examined by Otto Helm. For this reason, this Far Eastern amber variant is also called Romanite by some authors.

SS Savkevich demonstrated experimentally that under certain physical environmental conditions a conversion of succinite to romanite is possible. From this it was concluded that a common botanical origin of these two types of amber cannot be ruled out.

At the time of the systematic extraction of Romanite in the Conti area, the fossil resin was processed into fashionable articles, especially cigarette holders, in Romania and Vienna.

The term rumanite for this fossil resin, which is sometimes found in German-language scripts, is incorrect. Rumanite is a German word for opal.

literature

In addition to the individual verifications listed, the following sources were used:

  • Otto Helm: communications about amber. IV. On Sicilian and Romanian amber. In: Writings of the Natural Research Society in Danzig. Volume V, Issue 1, pp. 293-296, Danzig 1881.
  • Otto Helm: communications about amber. XIV. About Rumania. In: Writings of the Natural Research Society in Danzig. Volume VIII, pp. 186-189, Danzig 1891.
  • Paul Dahms: Mineralogical research on amber. IX. About romanite and succinite. In: Writings of the Natural Research Society in Danzig , New Series, Volume 12, Issue 2, Danzig 1908.
  • V. Ghurca: Comparison between the fossil resins of Romania and the Baltic Sea. In: Amber - Tears of the Gods. Pp. 363-368, Bochum 1996, ISBN 3-921533-57-0 .
  • T. Valaczkai & V. Ghiurca: Amber from Romania. In Metalla special issue, pp. 63-66, Bochum 1997.
  • B. and G. Krumbiegel: Bernstein - Fossil Resins from all over the world. Fossils, special volume 7, Weinstadt 1994, ISBN 3-926129-16-6 .

Individual evidence

Most of the information in this article has been taken from the sources given under literature; the following sources are also cited:

  1. ↑ HU Kasper: The Romanian amber. In: Amber - Tears of the Gods. Pp. 357-362, Bochum 1996, ISBN 3-921533-57-0 .
  2. ↑ a b G.M. Murgoci: Opere alese. Bucharest 1957, quoted by Kasper 1996.
  3. ↑ L. Zechmeister, V. Vrabely: About Telegdit, a fossil resin from Transylvania. In: Centralblatt für Mineralogie, Geologie und Paläontologie, Abt. 1, Heft 8, Stuttgart 1927, quoted by Kasper 1996.
  4. ^ CI Istrati & M. Mihailescu: Chihlimbarul de la Olanesti. In: Acad. Rome. Mem Sect. Stiint. III , 1 (8), Bucharest 1923; quoted in Valczkai & Ghiurca 1997.
  5. ↑ J.Frhr.v. Schröckinger: A new fossil resin from Bukowina. (PDF; 367 kB) In: Negotiations of the Imperial and Royal Geological Institute. Vienna 1875; quoted in Kasper 1996
  6. ^ Norbert Vavra: Amber and related organic minerals from Austria. - Contribution paleont. 29, Vienna 2005, pp. 255–280.
  7. ↑ Stout, Beck, Anderson: Identification of rumanite (Romanian amber) as thermally altered succinite (Baltic amber). - Physics and Chemistry of Minerals, 27 (9), Berlin 2000, pp. 665-678.
  8. ^ V. Wollmann: The amber mining of Colti. In: Amber - Tears of the Gods. Pp. 369-376, Bochum 1996.
  9. ↑ a b c K. Andrée: The amber and its meaning in the natural sciences and humanities, arts and crafts, technology, industry and trade. Koenigsberg 1937.
  10. ^ W. Weitschat & W. Wichard: Atlas of the plants and animals in the Baltic amber. Munich 1998. ISBN 3-931516-45-8 .
  11. ^ Opal (Rumanite). In: Mineralienatlas Lexikon. Stefan Schorn u. a., accessed on September 21, 2010 .

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