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50 free Amber trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This amber trivia quiz covers fossilised tree resin from the Devonian forests to the Kaliningrad mines of today. The early questions deal with what amber actually is, how sticky resin becomes copal and then amber, why the Greeks called it elektron and gave us the word 'electricity', why the English word once meant ambergris, and how Pliny explained the pine smell it gives off when rubbed. The middle section covers where amber comes from and what is inside it: the Baltic 'blue earth' that still yields 90 per cent of the world's supply, the succinic acid that defines succinite, the umbrella-pine relatives that produced it, Dominican amber from the extinct Hymenaea protera and its rare blue variety, the 99-million-year-old Burmese amber with birds and lizards inside, the oldest insects in amber from Italy and Lebanon, and the mosquito that never yielded dinosaur blood. The last questions turn to human uses and stories: the Amber Road to Aquileia, Stone Age jewellery, teething necklaces the FDA warns against, the Vienna pipe factories, Goethe's amber lenses, David Attenborough's boyhood gift, the Prussian craftsmen who built the Amber Room, the Tsar who received it and the mystery of where it went in 1944. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on amber, its regional varieties, the Amber Road and the Amber Room.
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Q 01What is amber?
Fossilised tree resin
It has been worked as a gemstone since classical antiquity and used in folk medicine, and is divided into five classes by chemical make-up.
Q 02The English word 'amber' comes via Arabic from a word for what substance?
Ambergris from the sperm whale
Both substances wash up on beaches; 'yellow amber' only displaced 'grey amber' as the main sense of the word as the use of ambergris waned.
Q 03What was the Ancient Greek word for amber, which gave us 'electricity'?
Elektron
Rubbed amber holds a static charge because it is such a good insulator; the word connects to elektor, 'beaming Sun'.
Q 04In Greek myth, amber formed from the tears of which figure's sisters, turned into poplars?
Phaethon
The son of the sun god Helios was killed driving his father's chariot; his mourning sisters' tears became elektron.
Q 05Pliny recorded the native Latin name 'succinum' for amber, derived from 'sucus'. What does that mean?
Juice
He noted that amber smells of pine when rubbed and burns like torch-pine wood, evidence that it came from trees.
Q 06Which Persian word for amber, meaning 'straw-attractor', became the Arabic word for electricity?
Kah-ruba
It entered Arabic as kahraba, and modern Arabic kahrabā' still means electricity.
Q 07What intermediate substance does resin become before it hardens fully into amber?
Copal
Sustained heat and pressure from overlying sediment drive off terpenes; most resin never survives, being broken down by sun, rain and microbes.
Q 08Where does amber sit on the Mohs hardness scale?
2.0–2.5
It has a refractive index of 1.5–1.6, a specific gravity of 1.06–1.10 and melts at 250–300 °C.
Q 09Why does amber float in strong brine but sink in a freshwater lake?
Its density is only slightly above that of pure liquid
Ambergris, by contrast, is less dense than water and floats freely.
Q 10Cloudy, opaque 'bony amber' owes its appearance to what?
Numerous tiny bubbles
Pyrites can tint amber bluish, while so-called black amber is really a kind of jet.
Q 11Which region, historically the coast of East Prussia, holds about 90 per cent of the world's extractable amber?
Kaliningrad Oblast
The area passed to the Soviet Union in 1946; the Kaliningrad Amber Combine dug 400 tonnes in 2015.
Q 12Baltic amber is found in a marine glauconitic sand known as what?
Blue earth
The Upper Eocene strata of Sambia in Prussia are the classic source; nodules must have their opaque crust cleaned off in barrels of sand and water.
Q 13Baltic amber is called succinite because it yields 3–8 per cent of which compound on dry distillation?
Succinic acid
The acid produces the aromatic, irritating fumes of burning amber and is highest in the pale bony varieties.
Q 21Amber from which Ukrainian region is illegally mined by gangs pumping water into the sediments?
Rivne
The practice deforests the surrounding land and causes severe environmental damage.
Q 22How old is the oldest amber ever recovered?
385 million years
It dates from the Middle Devonian, long before flowering plants, though its chemistry most resembles their resins.
Q 23Where was the oldest amber containing arthropods found, holding four microscopic mites and a fly?
Italy
The Late Triassic droplets are about 230 million years old; Lebanese amber of 125–135 million years holds the oldest large assemblages.
Q 14Baltic amber is now thought to come from trees of which family, whose only living member is the Japanese umbrella pine?
Sciadopityaceae
Heinrich Göppert had named the supposed amber pine Pinites succiniter, but many conifer genera appear in the amber flora.
Q 15During which geological epoch was Baltic amber produced?
Eocene
The forested region is estimated to have provided resin for more than 100,000 tons of amber.
Q 16Dominican amber comes from the resin of which extinct tree?
Hymenaea protera
Mostly transparent and rich in inclusions, it has allowed detailed reconstruction of a vanished tropical forest; it is retinite, not succinite.
Q 17Roughly how much rare blue amber is found each year in the Dominican Republic?
About 100 kg
It turns blue in sunlight or ultraviolet light and glows almost white under long-wave UV.
Q 18How is Dominican amber mined?
By bell pitting
The method is dangerous because of the risk of tunnel collapse.
Q 19Burmese amber from the Hukawng Valley is about how old?
99 million years
It is the only commercially exploited Cretaceous amber, and over 1,300 species have been described from it.
Q 20Kachin State in Myanmar has supplied amber to which country for at least 1,800 years?
China
Modern mining there has drawn criticism for unsafe conditions and for funding internal conflict.
Q 24Which Lebanese palaeontologist discovered more than 450 outcrops of Lower Cretaceous amber?
Dany Azar
Twenty of the outcrops yielded the oldest representatives of several living arthropod families.
Q 25Which marine animal, unexpectedly, has been found in Burmese amber?
An ammonite
Frogs, feathers, flowers and even a snake have also turned up in Cretaceous ambers.
Q 26Which 1990 novel made blood from mosquitoes trapped in amber the key to cloning dinosaurs?
Jurassic Park
No amber with a fossil mosquito has ever yielded preserved blood, and a 2013 study could not even extract DNA from much younger copal.
Q 27Which broadcaster's boyhood gift of insect-filled amber became the subject of his documentary The Amber Time Machine?
David Attenborough
The gift from his adoptive sister in 1938 became the focus of a BBC film in 2004.
Q 28A 1999 projection estimated that DNA trapped in amber could survive for how long?
Up to 100 million years
Most estimates put DNA survival at around a million years in ideal conditions, and later studies failed to recover any from Holocene copal.
Q 29Amber has been used in jewellery since the Stone Age, from about how long ago?
13,000 years
Amber ornaments have been found in Mycenaean tombs, and the Palanga Amber Museum in Lithuania is devoted to the material.
Q 30The Amber Road of Roman times ran from the Baltic coast to which city at the head of the Adriatic?
Aquileia
The route crossed modern Poland and the Czech lands and the Danube near Carnuntum; Aquileia was a major centre for shaping amber.