1. Resinites derived from plants differ widely in their chemical composition and physical characteristics (2). Copal and amber are often difficult to distinguish by inspection but differ in their resistance to heating and organic solvents. Less resistant copal is conventionally interpreted as an unfossilized version of amber although the relation between age and the complex diagenetic changes that yield true amber is not well understood. Dominican copal from Cotuí allegedly of Holocene age (9) is not discussed in this report because we were unable to examine its original depositional context. It is noteworthy that hard copal sometimes with biological inclusions can be recovered in the litter under Hymenaea trees today.
2. Grimaldi D. A., Amber: Window to the Past (Abrams and American Museum of Natural History, New York,1996.
3. Grimaldi D. A., Amber, Resinites and Fossil Resins, Anderson K. B., Crelling J. C. (ACS Symp. Ser. 617, American Chemical Society, Washington, DC, 1995), p. 203.
4. An Upper Eocene Frog from the Dominican Republic and Its Implication for Caribbean Biogeography
5. Baroni-Urbani C., Saunders J. B., Transactions of the 9th Caribbean Geology ConferenceSanto Domingo, Dominican Republic, , Snow W., et al., Eds. (1982), vol. 1, p. 213.