Some useful objects in homes get the least of our attention, like a chipped mug, a pile of old books, or a heavy stone doorstop that holds it open. All these remain in their places for years, doing their quiet job, and we hardly pay heed to their existence.But what if one of these hidden and seemingly useless objects turns out to be one of the greatest discoveries of all time?
How an ordinary-looking doorstop stone turned out to be a 70 million years old unique treasure found only at one place in the world
An elderly woman in Colți, in southeast Romania, found a 3.5-kilogram stone in a stream bed, took it home and used it as a doorstop for years. It was so humble that even jewel thieves who once targeted the house missed it, according to a report by Futura Sciences.After the woman died in 1991, a relative who inherited the house suspected the rock was more than it seemed. He sold it to the Romanian state, which had experts at the Museum of History in Kraków, Poland, examine it. To their surprise, they found that it is amber, likely about 38 to 70 million years old.Daniel Costache, director of the Provincial Museum of Buzău, told El País that the amber stone is of “great significance both at a scientific level and at a museum level,” and that the nugget has been a national treasure on display at the museum since 2022, and calls it one of the largest amber pieces known.
This special amber stone is found in specific regions of Romania
Amber is fossilised tree resin, which is not the same as sap. Sap carries water and nutrients through a tree, while resin is a sticky seal the tree makes to close wounds and keep out insects and disease. When buried and hardened over millions of years, it becomes amber.This Romanian type is called rumanite and is prized for its deep reddish shades, and Buzău County is one of Romania’s richest amber areas.Long ago, thick forests of conifer trees covered the Buzău region, and they produced a lot of sticky resin. Over millions of years, rivers carried the hardened resin along and left it in layers of sediment. This built up rich amber deposits, and people have been mining them around Colți since the 1920s.In Romania, amber is called chihlimbar. The local type is known as rumanite, found only in Romania. It is known for its deep colours, from dark red to brown and sometimes almost black, which look quite different from the usually lighter Baltic amber.
