Irrawaddy-Feb 26
China is celebrating another headline grabbing fossil discovery, even as the amber that fuels Beijing’s scientific boom continues to come from conflict zones scarred by human rights abuses in Myanmar’s Kachin State. China’s state run Global Times reported on Wednesday that a team led by well known paleontologist Xing Lida had identified the first known case of bone cancer in a 99 million year old lizard preserved in Burmese amber—another specimen sourced from a region riven by years of fighting between armed groups and the military.
The discovery of a dinosaur tail in amber by Xing Lida at a Myanmar border market in 2016 drew global attention and helped fuel China’s appetite for Myanmar fossils.
Amber is mainly mined in the Hukawng Valley, including the Tanai area, where Myanmar’s military and its allied militias have battled the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) for control of the lucrative mines for more than a decade. According to Science magazine, the breakdown of a ceasefire in 2011 turned the area into a militarized extraction zone, with armed groups taxing miners and traders as amber profits became a significant source of revenue for both sides. Myanmar passed the Protection and Preservation of Antique Objects Law in 2015, which prohibits the export of fossils. But in 2019 it reclassified amber as an exportable gemstone—without making any exception for pieces containing fossils. China sits at the center of the trade. Nearly all high value amber from Tanai and the wider Hukawng Valley ends up across the border in Yunnan, especially in Tengchong, which CNN describes as the heart of the Burmese amber market. Read more at:
