Lots of Amber with inclusions

[AdeRs3]

Found a nice hot spot for amber:)

[Randyw]

Just a couple questions if i may… where were these found? What tests did you do to confirm they were amber? I wasn’t aware of any amber deposits in pennsylvania….

can we get better pictures? Something doesn’t look quite right to me but it could be the pictures….

[AdeRs3]

Absolutely. Hot needle test, it does not react to acetone, it chips and does not peel with a knife like copal.

i have found 38 total pieces all within a area I spend a lot of time in. It’s a wooded area I. Southeast Pennsylvania.

Amber is by all means not common in PA.

it has also been looked at by Doug of amberica west.

top piece I’ve obviously cleaned, the rest is how they came out of the ground

[FranzBernhard]

4 hours ago, AdeRs3 said:

Amber is by all means not common in PA.

it has also been looked at by Doug of amberica west.

Do you know to which formation this amber belongs? How old is it?

These are some nice chunky pieces! Did you find them on the surface / as float or in outcrops?

Franz Bernhard

[AdeRs3]

I have no idea on which formation to be honest or the age. I found them in some really hard clay. I kept noticing small tips of glimmer on the surface and then had to try recover them. Sadly I know I broke a few pieces.

[JohnJ]

23 hours ago, Randyw said:

Just a couple questions if i may… where were these found? What tests did you do to confirm they were amber? I wasn’t aware of any amber deposits in pennsylvania….

can we get better pictures? Something doesn’t look quite right to me but it could be the pictures….

 

15 hours ago, AdeRs3 said:

Absolutely. Hot needle test, it does not react to acetone, it chips and does not peel with a knife like copal.

 

Can you better explain the tests you performed?

 

8 hours ago, AdeRs3 said:

I have no idea on which formation to be honest or the age. I found them in some really hard clay. I kept noticing small tips of glimmer on the surface and then had to try recover them. Sadly I know I broke a few pieces.

 

Consider the likelihood that large pieces of amber are not randomly found in areas where the geology doesn't support their formation.

[FranzBernhard]

9 hours ago, AdeRs3 said:

I have no idea on which formation to be honest or the age. I found them in some really hard clay.

Looks like you have discovered a new occurrence? Would you like to check out a geological map of PA to roughly pin down age and formation?

 

9 hours ago, AdeRs3 said:

Sadly I know I broke a few pieces.

No need to be sad, not easy to recover such big specimens intact from hard clay. Moreover, they already had some cracks. In my opinion, you did quite a good job!

 

Franz Bernhard

[FranzBernhard]

27 minutes ago, FranzBernhard said:

Would you like to check out a geological map of PA to roughly pin down age and formation?

 

10 hours ago, AdeRs3 said:

I have no idea on which formation to be honest or the age.

Did it myself, nice stripe of Jurassic and Triassic in that corner of PA! Perfect age for amber!

Franz Bernhard

[Yoda]

@AdeRs3

Fantastic finds. 

 

As the others have said above, would be interesting if you could work out the age of the deposit. 

[AdeRs3]

7 hours ago, JohnJ said:

 

 

Can you better explain the tests you performed?

 

 

Consider the likelihood that large pieces of amber are not randomly found in areas where the geology doesn't support their formation.

Sure. Heated up a pin, it penetrates through the amber. Even held a lighter to the pieces and it did not burn like a candle like copal, floats In salt water, ran a blade along the edges and it chips, does not peel like copal, I put 5 drops of acetone on the piece and it had no affect,unlike copal which gets sticky, does not get sticky when sanded and most important, it is fluorescent under a black light.

 

i have had a long convo with a guy who specifically deals in amber for the last 30 years and he has told me amber is certainly not common in PA but also not unheard of.

 

i was positive I had copal until speaking with him and performed the tests he instructed me on.

 

if you saw the location it would make complete sense. It’s 109ft above sea level, it is extreme sharp hills, all clay ground with a lot of run off and erosion and there is also an abundance of petrified wood. The biggest piece is not overly large. Palm of my hand kind of size.

[AdeRs3]

4 hours ago, FranzBernhard said:

 

Did it myself, nice stripe of Jurassic and Triassic in that corner of PA! Perfect age for amber!

Franz Bernhard

Would love to! How do I go about obtaining that info?

[FranzBernhard]

Just now, AdeRs3 said:

How do I go about obtaining that info?

I googled for geological map Pennsylvania.

Stumbled about some Dino footprints in that strata, but not much else.

Can dinosaur bones be found in Pennsylvania? - Quora

Franz Bernhard

[AdeRs3]

4 hours ago, Yoda said:

@AdeRs3

Fantastic finds. 

 

As the others have said above, would be interesting if you could work out the age of the deposit. 

I would love to. I’m getting help in doing so!

i will keep you updated for sure

[Randyw]

There are the conestoga and ledger formations where these were found so cambrian to odovician according to the geology maps.

(details edited out to keep the location private)

[Fossildude19]

[JohnJ]

2 hours ago, AdeRs3 said:

Sure. Heated up a pin, it penetrates through the amber. Even held a lighter to the pieces and it did not burn like a candle like copal, floats In salt water, ran a blade along the edges and it chips, does not peel like copal, I put 5 drops of acetone on the piece and it had no affect,unlike copal which gets sticky, does not get sticky when sanded and most important, it is fluorescent under a black light.

 

i have had a long convo with a guy who specifically deals in amber for the last 30 years and he has told me amber is certainly not common in PA but also not unheard of.

 

i was positive I had copal until speaking with him and performed the tests he instructed me on.

 

if you saw the location it would make complete sense. It’s 109ft above sea level, it is extreme sharp hills, all clay ground with a lot of run off and erosion and there is also an abundance of petrified wood. The biggest piece is not overly large. Palm of my hand kind of size.

Thank you.  

 

Can you show some examples of the petrified wood?  

[AdeRs3]

4 minutes ago, JohnJ said:

Thank you.  

 

Can you show some examples of the petrified wood?  

Sure thing.

these are just small piece I picked up to cut some and to tumble some, just out of curiosity.

 

[FranzBernhard]

8 minutes ago, AdeRs3 said:

Sure thing.

Not sure about pet wood. Look more like quartz segregations to me.

Would you like to post also the other stuff here ?

Can you describe the site more specifically? Not where it is exactly, but how it looks like and how large the amber- (and all other stuff) bearing area is etc.

Franz Bernhard

[FranzBernhard]

1 hour ago, Randyw said:

There are the conestoga and ledger formations where these were found so cambrian to odovician according to the geology maps.

I got it a little bit further to the south, low-grade Octoraro formation. Either way, not proper for amber etc.

Franz Bernhard

[AdeRs3]

I will take some picture tonight when I head out

[FranzBernhard]

@Randyw, @Fossildude19, do you have access to more detailed maps of the area in question? There must be something Mesozoic or Cenozoic out there besides the low-grade metamorphics and the Cambrian/Ordovician.
Franz Bernhard

[JohnJ]

If it is Chester County, PA, I'm still wondering what source formation exists.

[Fossildude19]

Yes, we need county and nearest town/city information.

If it is in Philadelphia County, there is a cretaceous formation there, per the USGS survey:

 

Potomac Formation, unit 3 (Upper Cretaceous, lower Cenomanian) at surface, covers < 0.1 % of this area

Sand, fine- to coarse-grained, locally gravelly, crossbedded, light-colored, interbedded with white or variegated red and yellow, massive clay, and rarely dark-gray, woody clay. The Potomac Formation crops out only in the Delaware River valley where the river and its tributaries have eroded away the overlying formations. The Potomac has been mapped in a broad belt parallel to the inner edge of the Coastal Plain. Although mapped in a broad belt, the Potomac is very poorly exposed because of the widespread cover of surficial sediments. The best exposures occur where surficial material is mined away in the Camden area. Unit is about 45 m (148 ft) thick. Contact with the overlying Magothy Formation is difficult to pick where the basal Magothy also contains variegated clays. Most of the basal Magothy has more dark-colored clay, and the contact was drawn by using this criterion. The basal contact of the Potomac with the underlying crystalline rock is not exposed in New Jersey. Biostratigraphically, the Potomac has been separated into pollen zones I, II, and III (Doyle, 1969; Doyle and Robbins, 1977). Samples from the Potomac Formation in the Camden area and along the Delaware River nearby contain pollen assemblages of early Cenomanian age (Zone III) (Les Sirkin, written commun., 1988).

 

[Fossildude19]

33 minutes ago, JohnJ said:

If it is Chester County, PA, I'm still wondering what source formation exists.

 

A few Triassic formations, and some Tertiary, as well. 

[AdeRs3]

14 minutes ago, Fossildude19 said:

 

A few Triassic formations, and some Tertiary, as well. 

It’s chester county, downingtown/exton area