Palaeontology and Historical Geology, Senckenberg Research Institute, 60325, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Departament de Dinàmica de la Terra i de l'Oceà and Institut de Recerca de la Biodiversitat (IRBio), Facultat de Ciències de la Terra, Universitat de Barcelona, 08028, Barcelona, Spain.
Sci Rep. 2020 Nov 16;10(1):19904. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-76808-6.
The early fossilization steps of natural resins and associated terminology are a subject of constant debate. Copal and resin are archives of palaeontological and historical information, and their study is critical to the discovery of new and/or recently extinct species and to trace changes in forests during the Holocene. For such studies, a clear, suitable definition for copal is vital and is herein established. We propose an age range for copal (2.58 Ma-1760 AD), including Pleistocene and Holocene copals, and the novel term "Defaunation resin", defined as resin produced after the commencement of the Industrial Revolution. Defaunation resin is differentiated from Holocene copal as it was produced during a period of intense human transformative activities. Additionally, the "Latest Amber Bioinclusions Gap" (LABG) since the late Miocene to the end of the Pleistocene is hereby newly defined, and is characterized by its virtual absence of bioinclusions and the consequent lack of palaeontological information, which in part explains the historical differentiation between amber and copal. Crucial time intervals in the study of resin production, and of the biodiversity that could be contained, are now clarified, providing a framework for and focusing future research on bioinclusions preserved in copal and resin.
天然树脂及其相关术语的早期石化步骤一直是争论的主题。柯巴脂和树脂是古生物学和历史信息的档案，对发现新的和/或最近灭绝的物种以及追踪全新世森林的变化至关重要。对于此类研究，柯巴脂的定义必须清晰且适用，在此我们提出了一个柯巴脂的年龄范围（258 万年至公元 1760 年），包括更新世和全新世的柯巴脂，以及新术语“去动物群树脂”，定义为工业革命开始后产生的树脂。去动物群树脂与全新世柯巴脂不同，因为它是在人类活动强烈的时期产生的。此外，本文还重新定义了从中新世晚期到更新世末期的“最新琥珀生物内含物差距”（LABG），其特征是几乎没有生物内含物，因此缺乏古生物学信息，这部分解释了琥珀和柯巴脂在历史上的区别。现在已经澄清了树脂生产和可能包含的生物多样性的关键时间间隔，为研究保存在柯巴脂和树脂中的生物内含物提供了框架，并集中了未来的研究。
