'flat bird'in amber
squashed vertebrates in amber
poorly preserved in amber
These flat pieces of amber although common often contain poorly preserved animals. On the rare occassion that we find flat or discoid ambers with well preserved vertebrates we do consider them for acquisition.
Although as we mentioned they are often poorly preserved there are rare instances where there is exceptional preservation, a very rare animal or a unique animal interaction worthy of consideration.
The flat ambers are normally from amber originating outside the tree rather than an animal's home in the tree which means that there is a higher chance of other insects etc being present in the amber.
Being flat often makes imaging much easier and if it is a large flat piece of amber it can contain an entire micro ecosystem for study.
There are as we explain in our tetrapod research section many different types of amber and amber preservation and whilst we strive to find fully 3 dimensional fossils in clean amber it is of course extremely rare and difficult to find such fossils. When obtaining amber from shallow pit mines, redeposited ambers and from ambers that come in discs then the liklihood is that will be a flatter more cloudy amber and although there are some features present that enable us to establish that bird remnants are present it lacks the aesthetics and information potential of the rarer 3d specimens that usually come from hollows amber.
