Is the mosquito in amber inspired by a real object?

Question

A friend recently told me that the mosquito encased in amber atop the cane used by John Hammond in Jurassic Park was a real mosquito encased in amber from David Attenborough's private collection (John Hammond being played by David's brother, Richard Attenborough).

It sounded like a cool fact and I wanted to substantiate it, but alas, the prop in the movie is entirely false and is made of resin and faux amber according to this website which has a listing for the prop when it was sold at auction.

In the essence of no smoke without fire, I do wonder, was the mosquito encased in amber inspired by a real artifact, perhaps held by David Attenborough? Specifically, did the props department have a particular source artifact to draw from during design which had perhaps come from David?

I asked my friend where they had heard this from and they couldn't remember, but were dissapointed that I've ruined their cool Jurassic Park fact.

Answer 1

Your friend was perhaps thinking of The Amber Time Machine, a documentary that David presented, many years later, which did indeed talk about the creatures preserved in a block of amber he owned.

In the programme he referred to his brother's role in the film and discussed the possibility of extracting DNA as depicted there. However, I don't think there was any mention of the prop being inspired by the actual amber block.

Of course that idea of extracting DNA from insects embedded in amber came from the original book by Michael Crichton, which did not have any reference to either Attenborough.

Answer 2

Insects in amber is very much a real thing.

A very big difference between fossils and amber-trapped matter is that the amber preserves the original materials, whereas a fossil completely replaces the original material with minerals. This allows for accurate isotope analysis, etc. It also gives a very good 3-d viewability of the object, as amber is conveniently very transparent.

But as for actual DNA extraction? That is not so easy. The DNA molecule is a ridiculously large, and rather fragile construct. The amber traps the material of the insect in place at the microscopic level, but there is very little actual preservation at the cellular and chemical level.

A couple of examples:

It's not just insects, small critters end up in the Amber, too.

And even pieces of larger animals. Here is an actual dinosaur tail, complete with feathers (yes, they had feathers).. pic from cnn, amber is of tail section belongs to a young coelurosaurian, amber from an amber market in northern Myanmar

Answer 3

Yes, inspired by a 1982 paper by George Poinar and Roberta Hess. Crichton even went to interview them and look at their lab.

And how did you eventually get involved with Jurassic Park?

From what I gather, from what Michael Crichton said, he had written Jurassic Park, but he hadn’t decided how he was going to get the dinosaur DNA, and when he read the paper on the fly in Baltic amber [paywalled - see images below], this gave him the idea that he would obtain it from mosquitoes that bit the dinosaurs.

So the film department called us and said they were doing this, and they wanted to come and film our lab. And then Michael Crichton contacted us separately and flew out, and we talked to him. Very nice, tall person. Then, that was it. The next thing we knew, the book was out and then the movie was out. We were quite surprised when we heard about all of the casting!

_{^{The Paleobiologist Who Inspired the Science in ‘Jurassic Park’}}

_{^{Images from POINAR, G. O., & HESS, R. (1982). Ultrastructure of 40-Million-Year-Old Insect Tissue. Science, 215(4537), 1241–1242.}}

Answer 4

According to the Amber museum in the Dominican Republic, there was a real piece of amber with a mosquito used in the movie (if the one in the cane was a prop, I'm gonna guess the real one should be the one they show at the beginning, in the mine). The piece was exhibited in the museum until they traded it for the rights to copy the Jurassic Park logo to make their own logo.

Answer 5

I don't know if this information is of interest but my brother Anthony Leonardi Jr or Tony Leonardi made that prop and I am pretty sure he still has it. He is now retired and living in Nevada. He made many props used in many films such as the Ball used in Castaway for example. If you would like I am sure he can tell you exactly how it was made and maybe even share a photo of it.