Unlucky Lizard
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Pine resin is an excellent preservative. Within its clear embrace, insects and small vertebrates may remain as perfect as the day they died, with fine hairs, scales and even stomach contents fixed for eternity. Fossilised pine resin, five million or more years old, is called amber. It has hardened and 'devolatilised', meaning most of the volatile aromatic chemicals have escaped.
This little dragon lizard (Diporiphora species) put a foot wrong and become entombed in pine resin. On scratching the surface a rich aroma of pine was released. This showed that the resin was modern and not true amber. Mr Dieter Ewartz brought it to the Queensland Museum's Inquiry Centre for identification. While he owned it for more than 30 years, its origin is unknown but there is every chance that it came from a Queensland rainforest.
While all pine trees produce resin, the most spectacular lumps come from Kauri (Agati) pines. A number of different Kauris grow in rainforests of Queensland, New Guinea, Indonesia and other islands of the South-west Pacific. Particularly in the East Indies (modern Indonesia), the resin was harvested from living trees to produce varnishes used in the manufacture of furniture, linoleum and in oil painting. Its use declined after the 1940s as synthetic varnishes became available.