Sibelle Maksoud

New Jurassic amber outcrops from Lebanon

Amber predating the Lower Cretaceous is extremely rare. During the past two decades, records of discoveries of amber sites have increased considerably worldwide. We report herein the discovery of ten new outcrops of amber from the Late Jurassic in Lebanon, in addition to other nine outcrops described by Azar et al. (2010). Some of these outcrops gave large centimetric sized amber pieces. Each of these new amber outcrops is described, and its infrared spectrum is given. Though the Jurassic amber yielded to date no more than some fungal inclusions, this discovery is significant and promising especially in the reconstruction of the paleoenvironment.

Context and genesis of the Lebanese amberiferous palaeoenvironments at the Jurassic-Cretaceous transition

The Lebanese amber is still the oldest for Gondwanaland and its fauna is relatively well studied; as to date about 180 taxa have been described from this material. Nevertheless, the formation of the different Lebanese amberiferous outcrops is not yet clearly understood. We propose a new hypothesis and interpretation for the formation of amber deposits in the Late Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous Lebanese sediments. We thus evoke the evolution of the stratigraphy and the geodynamical context that lead to the amber deposition. Indeed, tectonic complexity of what is now a part of the Middle East area existed since the Precambrian times and is still modeling its geology. We redefine as well Lebanon during the formation of its amber deposits, but we do not conclude on the real age of this amber.