The adage that one individual’s discarded item represents another’s prized possession certainly holds true, but a piece of ‘rock’ that served as a door prop for numerous decades can unequivocally be considered a treasure by nearly everyone’s estimation.
A woman unearthed the 3.5-kilogram (7.7-pound) stone from a riverbed in southeastern Romania, subsequently bringing it home and employing it as a makeshift doorstop.
Her fortuitous discovery, as reported by El Pais, transpired to be one of the largest monolithic pieces of amber ever found globally.
Its estimated worth? Approaching €1 million, which equates to approximately US$1.1 million.
A comprehensive overview is available in the video below:
Within Romania, amber fragments are frequently encountered in the vicinity of the village of Colti. These are extracted from sandstone deposits along the banks of the River Buzau, areas where this material has been extracted since the 1920s.
This specific variety of amber, recognized as rumanite, is celebrated for its rich spectrum of deep, crimson tones.
The elderly woman who discovered this particular rumanite specimen resided in Colti. There, it fulfilled such an unassuming role that it evaded detection even by burglars who had previously targeted the residence, according to reports.
Following the woman’s passing in 1991, a relative who inherited her estate began to suspect that the doorstop might possess intrinsic value beyond its utilitarian function.
Upon learning of its potential significance, the amber was sold to the Romanian state, which then commissioned experts from the Museum of History in Krakow, Poland, to conduct a formal appraisal.
These specialists have determined that the amber is likely between 38 and 70 million years old.
“Its unearthing holds considerable importance from both a scientific and a museum perspective,” stated Daniel Costache, the director of the Provincial Museum of Buzau, in his remarks to El Pais.
Designated as a national treasure of Romania, the amber nugget has been housed at the Provincial Museum of Buzau—the very county where the artifact was discovered—since 2022.
This remarkable find bears a striking resemblance to the case of a Michigan man who utilized a substantial rock as a doorstop, only to discover decades later that he had been securing his doors with a meteorite valued at $100,000.
Possessing a piece of amber valued at over a million dollars is certainly an extraordinary outcome. One can only speculate as to the number of doorstops such a sum could procure.
Amber originates from tree resin that solidified millions of years ago. Over extended geological periods, this highly viscous material undergoes fossilization, transforming into a hard, warm-toned substance widely acknowledged as a precious gemstone.
Above ground, tree resin can function as an adhesive trap, capturing remarkably well-preserved specimens of invertebrate life that offer valuable insights for scientific study millennia later.
While amber is relatively prevalent in the Northern Hemisphere, its discovery in the southern regions of the planet has been sporadic.
During the Barremian epoch, approximately 122 million years ago, vast quantities of resin were generated by coniferous trees across the globe. These ancient forests dominated terrestrial flora until around 70 million years ago.
An extraordinary 112-million-year-old amber specimen recently retrieved from the Genoveva quarry in Ecuador has preserved at least five insect orders, including a variety of flies, a fungus beetle, wasps, and a caddisfly.
Furthermore, it yielded evidence of arachnid activity in the form of a preserved spider web fragment. The orientation of the silk strands suggests that the web might have been constructed in a manner similar to modern orb-weavers, although it lacks the characteristic sticky droplets found in such webs.
“These findings provide direct evidence of a humid, resinous forest ecosystem and its arthropod inhabitants in equatorial Gondwana during the Cretaceous Resinous Interval,” the researchers, including paleobiologist Xavier Delclòs from the University of Barcelona, elucidate in their September publication.
In 2024, scientists from Germany and the UK made their inaugural discovery of amber in West Antarctica. This fossilized material represents the ancient ‘blood’ of coniferous trees that once flourished on Earth’s southernmost continent between 83 and 92 million years ago.
Accompanying fossils of roots, pollen, and spores, this discovery offers some of the most compelling evidence to date of a mid-Cretaceous, marshy rainforest ecosystem that existed near the South Pole. This prehistoric environment was characterized by a landscape “dominated by conifers,” mirroring contemporary forests in New Zealand and Patagonia.
“Our current objective is to gain a deeper understanding of this forest ecosystem—whether it experienced fires and if we can locate preserved traces of life within the amber,” stated marine geologist Johann Klages of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany.
“This discovery provides an even more direct avenue for exploring the past.”
Remarkably, due to the preservational properties of amber, several ancient tardigrades have survived for millions of years.
