Stantienite

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Stantienite natural form rubble; Size 39 mm; Collection: Natural History Museum Mauritianum Altenburg.
Stantienite, natural form drops; Size 18 mm (large piece in the middle right); Collection: Natural History Museum Mauritianum Altenburg.

Stantienite is a type of amber that was described by Ernst Pieszczek in 1880. Stantienite was found as an accessory component in the Baltic amber (succinite) obtained by mining. The name was given after Friedrich Wilhelm Stantien , the co-owner of the Stantien & Becker company , the first industrial amber mining company in Samland . Since then, no new finds have been made from Samland. As early as the 1880s, however, there was great uncertainty as to which of the few finds of the same color and texture were stantienite. New discoveries of the Bitterfeld amber deposit only became known from 1986 . The long-standing confusion then revived.

Ernst Pieszczek described this optically exotic black fossil resin as "extremely brittle" and very easy to pulverize. The powder has a cinnamon brown color. It does not contain succinic acid .

More than 30 pieces larger than 20 mm and several hundred pieces of grain size smaller than 20 mm were recovered from the Bitterfeld amber deposit. The not infrequent drops and smokes speak against the frequently expressed doubts about the resinous nature of stantienite, especially when the resin has dripped onto succinite.

The producer of the stantienite is not yet known. Probably a relationship with Canarium rostratum from the balsam tree family (Burseraceae) appears, according to Alexander Tschirch, the presumed parent plant of the "black (Sumatra) dammar".

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, meeting reports, Königsberg 1881, pages 22–31 (online)
  3. ^ 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 .
  4. ↑ Günter Krumbiegel , Barbara Kosmowska-Ceranowicz: Bitterfeld amber types and variants compared to other deposits (status of the investigations 2004) . In: Excursion guide and publications of the German Society for Geosciences , Issue 224, Berlin 2004, pages 47–59.
  5. ↑ Günter Krumbiegel, Barbara Kosmowska-Ceranowicz (2007): The types of Bitterfeld amber . In: Bitterfelder Heimatblätter , special issue 2007, Bitterfeld 2007, ISSN  0232-8585 , pages 43-64
  6. ^ Roland Fuhrmann: The bitter fields amber. In: Mauritiana , Volume 21, Altenburg 2010, ISSN  0233-173X , pages 13-58, PDF .
  7. ^ Paul Dahms: Mineralogical investigations on amber. - XIII: Black resin and Baltic amber . In: Writings of the Natural Research Society in Danzig, New Series , Volume 15, Issue 3, Danzig 1921, pages 57-68.
  8. ↑ Alexander Tschirch: The resins. The botanical and chemical basics of our knowledge of the formation, development and composition of plant excreta . Volume II, 1st half: XII, Berlin 1935, 471 pages

Web links

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