One of the best views of Santiago where you can enjoy the greenery of its mountains. Ludovida Colomé keeps the memory of her when she extracted amber. Onelio Dominguez/LD
Santiago, D.R.
The extraction of amber in the mine of La Búcara in the Cordillera Septentrional in the province of Santiago was the main livelihood of the inhabitants decades ago; however, with the passing of the years, this has been disappearing.
The inhabitants assure that even on the road, they found this precious stone, which before the arrival of Covid-19 was very common to receive the visit of Chinese and Americans to buy at a lower price and use the material to sell as jewelry.
According to one of Ludovina’s sons, a pound of amber has a market price of up to RD$2 million. And, unlike red and yellow amber, blue amber can be even more expensive.
“Now, when that amber had insect or plant fossils in it, that’s when it was more expensive,” explained the 85-year-old woman.
The fossilized remains of a rare flower and a parasitic wasp more than 30 million years old, discovered and studied by the American paleontologist George Poinar Jr, from the Department of Integrative Biology at Oregon State University, in the United States, come from this place.
Through an article in the specialized magazine Historial Biology, the professor informed that the rare flower found in the country is a plant that belongs to the Euphorbiaceae family of the Plukenetia mínima genus, which has more than 300 genera. Currently, most of them are found in Africa, Madagascar, and Asia.
Source and full article: https://dominicantoday.com/dr/local/2022/07/29/amber-disappears-in-the-mountains-of-santiago/