When a person gets a scratch or a cut, they may bleed. That blood can harden into a scab to protect the body. Some trees have a similar process when they get hurt. If the plants are cut or injured, they release resin, and sometimes resin turns into a fossil called amber. This change can take millions of years in nature, but scientists found a way to speed it up in a lab. They made amber in 24 hours!
All trees make sap, the fluid they use to move food and . Resin, however, mostly comes from coniferous trees — trees that grow cones and needles instead of leaves. Resin seals wounds in a tree and keeps out germs and bugs. When a small animal gets trapped in the sticky stuff, it can turn into a fossil along with the resin. Critters trapped in amber are often preserved with amazing detail, letting scientists learn about life millions of years ago.
Evan Saitta works as a at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois. He wanted to know more about what happens to the animals that get trapped in amber. Saitta wondered, “Is an insect in amber perfectly preserved, as if it were frozen in time?” He told News-O-Matic that he wanted to find out if that “is just a dream inspired by movies like Jurassic Park.”
Saitta did an experiment with paleontologist Thomas Kaye. The experts knew that amber forms when resin gets buried in the Earth. Heat and pressure change the resin into amber. So, Saitta and Kaye made a device to “pressure cook” resin they got from pine trees at the Chicago Botanical Garden.
They put the resin in clay to create “a more realistic setting for these changes.” Saitta explained that he didn’t know if his experiment would work but said it “sounded like a fun thing to try!”
It turns out, the experiment did work. The scientists succeeded in creating amber in 24 hours — much faster than in other tests. The amber they made had similar lines, air pockets, and color to the real thing. The team released a report about the work in the March 24, 2025, issue of the journal Scientific Reports.
Now that they know how to quickly make amber, Saitta and Kaye plan to do more experiments with resin. That includes trapping insects and other items in the lab-made amber to study the changes that happen as fossils form. The scientists also plan to make amber with resin from other trees to see the different ways it forms.
With this work, Saitta is living out a childhood dream. “My entire life, I have wanted to be a scientist,” he shared. And the expert has advice for the kids of today who hope to be the scientists of tomorrow. “Curiosity is the most important motivation for doing science,” he said. “Stay curious and try to answer the questions that capture your interest.”
Saitta said it is key to “read as much as you can about many different topics.” But remember, “science is not memorizing facts from a textbook,” he added. “It is about questioning things, even if others might disagree, and then testing those ideas and using evidence to find the truth.”
By Diana Richard
Updated March 28, 2025, 5:00 P.M. (ET)
