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Amber is fossilized tree sap. Its ability to trap and perfectly preserve insects was made famous by the film Jurassic Park, where dinosaurs were cloned using DNA from the blood of mosquitoes trapped in amber.

Butterflies often use mimicry-a kind of camouflage to hide from predators.

Chalcopyrite is the principal ore of copper. Like Pyrite it has often been mistaken for gold. It is a brassy yellow-coloured metal and occurs in similar contexts to gold.

(see previous entries of colubrid snake)

Fluorite occurs in a range of different colours. This example is pale yellow.

Fluorite occurs in a range of different colours. This example is pale yellow

Gold is one of the most sought-after metals, not only for its beauty but also for its usefulness in the production of many things, including computers. In fact there is a very small amount of gold in your mobile phone! Gold is chemically very inert, so does not corrode like other metals and remains in the same state for countless millennia. There are examples of gold jewellery nearby in the Explorers and Collectors room.

A rock formed by erosion of iron-rich deposits. It has been used since ancient times to the present day, ground up, to make red paint and is sometimes burnt to enhance the red colour.

It is also known as the breadcrumb sponge because of the way it crumbles when one holds it. It is an invertebrate which varies in colour from dark green to light yellow and is often found in shaded rock openings or under rocky overhangs in the waters of the North Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea.

An iron hydroxide - it contains oxygen and water.

A vibrantly coloured variety of quartz named after its resemblance to the slit eye of a cat. It is formed when blue asbestos (crocidolite) is replaced by silicon dioxide and it gets its colour from oxidation of iron minerals. This sample comes from South Africa.