挖掘过去18

The hunt was on. The candidate that they chose was a bee from dominican amber because we had a lot of that, because obviously you don't want to destroy some of your best specimens and come up with nothing because it involves cutting the insect out of its amber tomb, grinding it up and doing the DNA analysis. But sadly nothing was found. We ground up a lot of bees in amber, which was a bit of a shame. Only broken DNA fragments have been recovered from amber, and none from a dinosaur. Even so, the museum's amber collection gives us a uniquely intimate picure of ancient life. Amber is the perfect time capsule, and you see things caught like on a camera, which you don't see with other fossils. Insects, you can actually see their death struggles inside by the flow lines in the amber, its last desperate attempts to get out.

对此 我们开始了实验，他们选择的候选物种，是多米尼加琥珀中的蜜蜂，这种蜜蜂的样本数量很多。我们当然不希望毁掉珍贵的样本，却一无所获，因为需要切开琥珀石，取出昆虫，碾碎后做DNA分析，但遗憾的是 我们并无发现。白白破坏了许多蜜蜂琥珀，太可惜了。琥珀中提取出的，只是DNA碎片。而且都不属于恐龙， 即便如此，博物馆的琥珀收藏为我们提供了古生物的独特影像。琥珀是完美的时间胶囊，收藏了古生物的快照，这在其他化石里是没有的，你可以观察琥珀里的纹路，看出这些昆虫死前拼命挣扎，希望从中逃出。