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Doorstop Stone Unearthed as 70 Million-Year-Old Amber Treasure
21 Oct
Summary
- An elderly woman's doorstop was a 70 million-year-old amber treasure.
- The unique Romanian amber, known as rumanite, boasts deep reddish shades.
- This significant national treasure is displayed at a museum since 2022.
A humble doorstop in Colți, Romania, turned out to be an extraordinary discovery, estimated to be between 38 and 70 million years old. The 3.5-kilogram stone, found in a stream bed by an elderly woman, was used to hold open a door for years, overlooked even by jewel thieves.
Following the woman's death in 1991, a relative inherited the house and suspected the stone's value. It was sold to the Romanian state, and experts at a museum in Poland confirmed it was amber. This unique specimen, known as rumanite, is characterized by its deep reddish-brown colors, distinguishing it from lighter Baltic amber.
Buzău County, where Colți is located, is rich in this precious fossilized resin. Thick conifer forests once covered the area, producing abundant resin that rivers transported and deposited over millennia. Rumanite has been mined in Colți since the 1920s, and this particular large piece has been a national treasure on display since 2022.
