Amber Inclusions from Myanmar – Windows into an Ancient World
For nearly 100 million years, Kachin amber has preserved extraordinary traces of a vanished ecosystem.
About MacroAmber
Kachin Amber from Myanmar
Kachin amber from northern Myanmar, also widely known as Burmese amber or Burmite, comes from deposits in the Hukawng Valley region of Kachin State and dates back about 99 million years to the Cretaceous Period. It preserves an extraordinary diversity of organisms from a time when dinosaurs still lived on Earth.
What makes Kachin amber especially fascinating is its Cretaceous age. The insects, arachnids, plants, fungi and other organisms preserved within it lived in a world where dinosaurs still existed. This direct connection between tiny organisms trapped in resin and the age of the dinosaurs offers a fascinating glimpse into life nearly 100 million years ago.
Most inclusions are darkened, deformed by natural fire, obscured or affected by natural geological processes over millions of years. Only a small fraction are preserved well enough to reveal fine structures such as hairs, surface textures or delicate morphological details.
Some deposits within the region are known for producing better preserved material, but even there, exceptionally clear and detailed inclusions remain rare.
With its great age, exceptional biodiversity and scientific importance, Kachin amber provides a remarkable record of life in a nearly 100 million year old ecosystem.
Photography & Documentation
All specimens on MacroAmber are photographed using high resolution macro and micro imaging, with a strong focus on accuracy, consistency and the faithful documentation of fine morphological details.
Each final image is created using focus stacking. Depending on the magnification, depth of the inclusion and the three dimensional orientation of structures such as legs, antennae or wings, a single image may consist of fifty to more than one thousand individual photographs.
To minimize reflections and achieve clean, even illumination, I use a carefully adjusted LED lighting system with eight individually controllable light sources. Subtle transmitted light from below is added when necessary to improve transparency while preserving internal details.
All images are produced using high quality macro and microscope optics. My aim is to document each inclusion as precisely and consistently as possible, allowing collectors, enthusiasts and researchers to examine even very small morphological structures in detail.
About Alexander Beigel
My name is Alexander Beigel, and I have been fascinated by amber and its inclusions since my youth in the late 1990s. What began as a personal interest gradually developed into a passion for discovering, studying and photographing the tiny organisms preserved inside amber.
My collection initially focused on spiders and later expanded to many other types of inclusions. I began with Baltic amber and gained further experience in microscopy and photography by studying and photographing inclusions in Madagascan copal. Over the years, I continuously refined my photographic techniques and developed a particular interest in revealing details that are often difficult to see with the naked eye.
Scientific exchange has been an important part of my collecting from the very beginning. One of the people who has influenced me most is the arachnologist and friend Jörg Wunderlich, with whom I have maintained a close personal and scientific connection since the beginning of my passion for collecting amber. Through Kachin amber, I later came into contact with many other specialists from different fields, including the scorpion researcher Wilson Lourenço, with whom I have co authored scientific publications. Over the years, several fossil species have been named in my honor, including †Chimerarachne alexbeigel Wunderlich, 2023, which is particularly meaningful to me.
Since 2010, Kachin amber from Myanmar has been the main focus of my collection and photography. Its extraordinary diversity and Cretaceous age continue to fascinate me, especially the fact that the organisms preserved within it lived in a world where dinosaurs still existed.
MacroAmber grew from this combination of collecting, photography and scientific exchange. My aim is to build a continuously expanding visual reference that documents the remarkable diversity of life preserved in Kachin amber as clearly and precisely as possible.