Ergo, this could mean that amber did not become amber in its current location, but got moved there a long time ago, which could mean it is even older than we think.

Numbers proposed range anywhere in between the Cretaceous (Brouwer and Brouwer, 1982) to pre-Lower Miocene period (Baroni-Urbani and Saunders, 1982) -- meaning about 100 million years ago and less (the approximate time of the dinosaurs, which should make Jurassic Park fans very happy).

This theory is often refuted because little amber, if any, is ever found in rock formations known to be from the Mesozoic Era (it has been found, but not enough to validate an argument).

Still, redeposition is not out of the question and needs further examination.

It doesn’t exactly break the Law of Superposition, but it doesn’t support it either.

Just makes it all fuzzy.

You know, sometimes I get the impression Momma Earth does this on purpose to make things hard on us.

Newsletter Home
We Dig Mother Earth at Any Age
Radioactive Dating
Getting an Enemar
May the Quartz be With You
A Redisposition of the Redeposition
The Exclusion of the Inclusion
Right-to-Left, If You Please!

by Alec Corday
Santiago, November 2005

There’s a law, and it’s the Law of Superposition.

It basically states that the deeper a deposit, the older it is, the shallower the deposit the younger it is.

It’s a great way to date rocks and its logic as heck.

It’s a law and geologists get very grumpy when someone dares to speak against it.

But then there is the issue of redeposition.

The reason why Dominican amber is often found in different strata may be because it moves around a lot.