By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Amber found in the Amazon forest region of Ecuador containing a trove of well-preserved fossils of wasps, midges, flies, beetles and other insects is giving a glimpse of a Cretaceous Period ecosystem in South America crawling with activity 112 million years ago during the age of dinosaurs.

Amber is fossilized tree resin. Sometimes amber is found with bioinclusions – animals, plants and fungi that got trapped in the sticky stuff before it hardened and eventually fossilized.

The pieces of amber unearthed by researchers in a quarry near the town of Archidona in Ecuador’s Napo Province contained bioinclusions of insects and even part of a spider’s web. Fossilized plant remains were found in sediment nearby.

Nearly all the major amber deposits found to d

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