The resin of the Hymenaea protera tree is the source of Dominican amber. This tree is already extinct.
Dominican amber differs from the others by being more transparent, and having a bigger number of fossil remains.
A study in 1990 showed that this amber can be between 15 and 30 million years old. The oldest of these samples comes from the mountainous region north of the province of Santiago de los Caballeros.
The amber found in the Dominican Republic is considered the most valuable in the world for being the most transparent, for its abundance of fossil insects and for its color, which in addition to yellow, which is the most common, can be found in intense red and such unusual colors as gray, black and blue.
This amber gained worldwide fame thanks to Steven Spielberg's film Jurassic Park, which was inspired by pieces of Dominican amber that contain prehistoric insects.
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