Educational Media Reviews Online

Looking like solid sunshine, the fossilized tree sap called amber has attracted humans for millennia. A small piece was given to Sir David Attenborough when he was a twelve-year-old in 1938, leading to a lifelong interest. Jewel of the Earth is an episode of the excellent PBS science series Nova hosted by Attenborough. Following an introduction, Jewel of the Earth touches on the history of its use from prehistoric carvings and beads to Roman emperors.

Like one in twenty pieces, Attenborough’s amber contained trapped insects. Unlike fossils, plants and animals are preserved as they lived, in exquisite detail. These inclusions, which can be 40 million years old, are a window on the past. Scientists are seen and interviewed about their deductions of entire ecosystems based on a single amber-trapped plant or insect. Knowing what kind of environment an organism lives in leads to understanding of its world. A leaf leads to a forest, a tadpole leads to a treetop world in miniature. This film is full of gorgeous, lush photography, panoramic, normal scale and close-up. One effective animation features a bee emerging from amber and taking wing through a prehistoric forest.

Jewel of the Earth lays to rest the intriguing idea popularized in the film Jurassic Park: that it is possible to clone dinosaurs from DNA extracted from insects in amber. In that film, a character played by Sir David’s brother, Sir Richard Attenborough, masterminded the scheme. And, in fact, two scientists did report that they had extracted intact DNA from an insect trapped in amber. Later work, however, showed that they were in error.

The film is supplemented by material online at pbs.org. It also contains video text descriptions and closed captions and has DVD-ROM features for computer users. It is highly recommended for biology students and others interested in ecosystems, insects and earth science.