Amber (Cretaceous age, from New Jersey!)

Item Description

Beautiful piece of deep-red Amber from New Jersey. With just the right lighting, you can appreciate both the vivid color and the internal crazing that makes the Amber look like a glass mosaic. This is an incredible USA rarity today, only seen in museums and some old books, generally. As an interesting side note, it takes at least 100,000 years, often closer to one million, for tree resin to polymerize and turn into a true Amber. Previously in the 1800s-era collections of Isaac Jones Wistar, and the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. Per Google we find this on Wikipedia: New Jersey Amber, sometimes called Raritan amber, is amber found in the Raritan and Magothy Formations of the Central Atlantic (Eastern) coast of the United States. It is dated to the Late Cretaceous, Turonian age, based on pollen analysis of the host formations. Valued ??? we do not know either, having never had one for sale.