![\"\"](\"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/artemiada\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/yantar130724.jpg\")
\nPaleontologist Dany Azar shows off one of his treasures, which he discovered in Lebanon in a piece of amber from the early Cretaceous period: the oldest mosquito ever found<\/em><\/p>\n
Before Azar, researchers knew of only one amber outcrop in the south. But he found fossilized tree resin almost everywhere he went\u2014near the country\u2019s famous cedars, in the mountains, and even along the Beirut River outside the capital.<\/p>\n
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“They call me the ‘Amber Man,'” he says.<\/p>\n
Azar now lives in China, but returns to Lebanon several times a year to do fieldwork because the amber there is special. He describes the dawn of the flowering plant age, an ecological shift that changed life on Earth forever.<\/p>\n
If a time traveler were to visit the early Cretaceous period, he would see an Earth that would be completely unfamiliar and much more dangerous.<\/p>\n “There were dinosaurs and hordes of insects,” Azar says. “I don’t think I could have survived for even a minute in that environment because it could have been very dangerous. It was a tropical climate with very wet, dense, dark forest.”<\/p>\n This type of forest \u2013 full of ferns and conifers \u2013 was about to be taken over by flowering plants. And it was the arrival of flowers that transformed Earth into the planet we now live on. At that time, there was an explosion of new plant families, which were supplied with pollen and nectar, laid out like a buffet for the legions of insects that evolved and diversified over the following millennia to consume them.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything was changing,\u201d Azar says. \u201cA lot of groups emerged during this period \u2014 bees and other pollinators. And even the beginnings of butterflies and moths.\u201d Plants provided food and a new habitat for insects, and insects began pollinating many plants \u2014 so the two groups of organisms evolved in tandem.<\/p>\n That’s why Cretaceous amber is like a series of snapshots of the planet in transition – the time between two worlds.<\/p>\n These treasures are the product of a sticky resin that oozed from trees during the Cretaceous period, sometimes burying an insect or piece of plant material that, over time and under the right conditions, turned into amber.<\/p>\n \n Azar recently found a special mosquito in a 130-million-year-old piece of amber, the oldest ever found, just a mile from where he and Maksud stand today in Ain Dara. \u201cAnd what\u2019s more,\u201d he says, \u201cit\u2019s a male with very functional mouthparts for feeding on blood.\u201d<\/p>\n Today, there are no male mosquitoes that suck blood. That familiar, irritating bite \u2014 which helps spread deadly diseases like malaria and dengue fever \u2014 is delivered by pregnant females. That\u2019s because once flowers emerged in the early Cretaceous, Azar says, male mosquitoes likely changed their feeding habits, evolving away from blood to feed on another, safer food source: nectar.<\/p>\n And that’s just one treasure among many. Azar has amassed a find of more than 500 pounds of amber nuggets he’s collected over the years. He has numerous publications in papers that include discoveries of ancient flowers, dinosaur tracks, and new species of insects that Azar says will rewrite textbooks.<\/p>\n Azar treasures Lebanon’s paleontological wealth. There’s just one problem: Azar can’t get most of the rest of Lebanon to care about it.<\/p>\n “In China, they would make a museum there,” he says. “And in Europe, they would make land protection because they care. Here, I’ve been fighting for 20 years for us to have a natural history museum.”<\/p>\n Azar says all he has received are empty promises. To him, these amber layers are family heirlooms, scattered across a land racked by conflict and corruption.<\/p>\n Azar saw people building construction projects on the outcrops he discovered, but there was little enforcement of zoning regulations. Lebanon\u2019s financial crisis prompted him to move to China, where he lives away from his family for much of the year. And on this trip, he didn\u2019t venture south to collect amber samples.<\/p>\n “It’s too dangerous,” he explains. “Unfortunately, in southern Lebanon we are bombed every day. Why can’t we live peacefully and normally for a few years?”<\/p>\n However, Azar thinks and hopes that the museum he has long dreamed of will one day be built to house his treasures.<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Azar, who holds a joint appointment at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology in China and the Lebanese University, looks at the dirt and rocks in front of him. It doesn\u2019t look like much \u2013 but he knows what he\u2019s looking for. In the dirt and rocks at his feet, he spots a piece of amber no bigger than a grain of rice. Then he spots another, and another \u2013 shiny gold shards glittering in the…<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/artemiada\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/yantar1307241.jpg\")
\nAzar searches for amber along a rocky slope in the Hadath al-Jubbe area in 2023<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/artemiada\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/yantar1307242.jpg\")
\nGeologist Sibel Maksud (Azar’s wife) holds a golf ball-sized piece of amber<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/artemiada\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/yantar1307243.jpg\")
\nAmber after cleaning<\/em><\/p>\n