Level 1 - Absolute Beginner

Goethe was a very famous German writer who lived about 200 years ago. He loved science and nature. He also liked to collect things, including a special material called amber.

Amber is old tree sap that has become very hard over millions of years. Sometimes, small animals like insects get trapped inside it. The animals are then preserved forever.

Scientists looked at Goethe's old amber pieces. They found three insects inside them. One insect was a very old ant that lived 40 million years ago. Scientists had never seen this kind of ant so clearly before.

The scientists used a special machine that takes pictures inside the amber without breaking it. They could see the inside of the ant's body. This is very exciting for science.

amber

a hard, golden-yellow material formed from ancient tree resin (sap) that has hardened over millions of years; it can preserve animals and plants inside it

fossil

the preserved remains or traces of an animal, plant, or other organism from millions of years ago

extinct

no longer existing; describes a species of plant or animal that has completely died out

preserve

to keep something in its original condition so it does not decay or change over time

scientist

a person who studies the natural world by making observations and conducting experiments

insect

a small animal with six legs and usually wings, such as an ant, bee, or butterfly

collection

a group of objects gathered together over time by a person who finds them interesting

Eocene

a geological time period that lasted from about 56 to 34 million years ago, when many modern animal groups first appeared

Level 2 - Elementary

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the famous German poet and scientist, lived from 1749 to 1832. Throughout his life, he collected thousands of natural objects, including fossils, rocks, and pieces of amber. These collections were passed to museums after his death, where they have been kept for nearly two hundred years.

Scientists from Friedrich Schiller University Jena recently examined two pieces of amber from Goethe's personal collection. Inside, they discovered three well-preserved insects: a fungus gnat, a black fly, and, most importantly, an ant. The ant belongs to the extinct species Ctenobethylus goepperti, which lived during the Eocene epoch, between 47 and 34 million years ago.

To examine the specimens without damaging them, the researchers used a technique called synchrotron-based micro-computed tomography. This powerful form of 3D scanning sent beams of X-rays through the amber, creating detailed images of every part of the insect, including its internal organs and body structures. This was the first time scientists had been able to see inside this species in such detail.

The findings, published in the journal Scientific Reports, show that Ctenobethylus goepperti likely built large nests in trees. The study highlights a remarkable fact: important scientific discoveries can still be found in museum collections that were assembled centuries ago, simply by applying new technology to old specimens.

synchrotron

a very large scientific machine that produces extremely bright X-ray beams used to study materials in fine detail without destroying them

micro-computed tomography

a 3D scanning technique that uses X-rays to create detailed cross-sectional images of an object's internal structure

specimen

an individual example of an animal, plant, or mineral collected for scientific study

epoch

a long period of geological time, shorter than a period, defined by distinctive features of rock or life forms

fungus gnat

a type of small fly whose larvae feed on fungi and decaying plant matter, common in many environments

internal organs

the body parts found inside an animal, such as the heart, stomach, and brain

technique

a specific method or skill used to accomplish a particular task, especially in science or art

museum collection

the total set of objects owned and looked after by a museum for study, display, or preservation

Level 3 - Intermediate

A research team from Friedrich Schiller University Jena has published a study in Scientific Reports revealing three fossilised insects hidden within two pieces of amber from the personal natural history collection of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Goethe, who lived from 1749 to 1832, was as celebrated for his passion for natural science as for his literary works, and amassed approximately 23,000 natural specimens during his lifetime, including an extensive amber collection that was bequeathed to museums in Weimar and Jena.

The most scientifically significant of the three insects identified is a specimen belonging to Ctenobethylus goepperti, an extinct ant species that inhabited forests during the Middle to Late Eocene, approximately 47 to 34 million years ago. This period saw the emergence and early diversification of many modern insect lineages across the Baltic amber-producing forests of what is now northern Europe. Alongside the ant, the researchers identified a fungus gnat and a black fly, all three preserved in remarkable three-dimensional integrity within the amber matrix.

Because direct physical manipulation of amber-preserved specimens risks cracking or staining the fossil, the team employed synchrotron-based micro-computed tomography at the DESY research facility. The synchrotron's high-intensity X-ray beams penetrated the amber and generated a series of cross-sectional images that were computationally assembled into a complete three-dimensional reconstruction of each insect. This non-destructive imaging revealed internal muscular and glandular structures in the ant that had never been documented for the species from any previously studied specimen.

Beyond the biological findings, the study makes an important point about the untapped scientific value of historical museum collections. Goethe assembled his amber pieces without imaging technology capable of revealing their full contents; modern synchrotron methods have effectively unlocked a second layer of scientific data from material curated nearly two centuries ago. The authors argue that systematic re-examination of nineteenth-century European natural history collections using contemporary imaging could yield a significant number of undescribed species and previously unknown morphological details.

bequeathed

left to someone as a gift in a will after one's death

lineage

a sequence of species or organisms descended from a common ancestor

amber matrix

the solid body of hardened ancient resin in which a fossil insect is embedded and preserved

non-destructive imaging

a method of studying an object's internal structure using radiation or sound without cutting, dissolving, or damaging the object

glandular structure

an organ or tissue that produces and releases specific substances such as chemicals or hormones

morphological

Level 4 - Advanced

The Friedrich Schiller University Jena study published in Scientific Reports exemplifies a productive scientific genre: the re-examination of historically assembled natural history collections through imaging modalities unavailable to their original curators. Goethe's personal Naturalienkabinett, dispersed across institutional repositories in Weimar and Jena following his death in 1832, represents a particularly significant object of re-investigation given the intersecting cultural and scientific registers of its provenance; but the methodology the team deployed, synchrotron-based micro-computed tomography at the DESY Photon Science facility in Hamburg, is applicable across the full breadth of amber-holding collections in European natural history institutions.

The taxonomic centrepiece of the study is a specimen referable to Ctenobethylus goepperti, a bethylid-grade formicoid from the Middle-Late Eocene Baltic amber flora, provisionally placed at the base of the aculeate Hymenoptera and therefore of considerable interest for reconstructing early ant sociality. The synchrotron imaging protocol, yielding voxel resolutions of approximately 2.5 micrometres, resolved the petiolar node morphology, thoracic musculature insertion points, and a putative Dufour's gland homologue at a level of anatomical completeness previously accessible only from extant or freshly fixed comparative material. The morphological data permitted a refined parsimony placement of C. goepperti within early ant phylogenetics, nudging interpretations of nest-construction behaviour toward arboreal rather than sub-terrestrial strategies.

The epistemological contribution of the paper is in some respects as important as the palaeontological one. Nineteenth-century amber collectors, including Goethe, operated under the assumption that the surface-visible inclusion constituted the specimen's entire information content; they lacked both the imaging infrastructure and the conceptual framework to treat the resin matrix as a volumetric archive of soft-tissue proxies. Modern synchrotron facilities have inverted this assumption: where Goethe saw decorative and mineralogical objects of curiosity, the Jena team extracted clade-diagnostic anatomical characters from specimens that have rested, under-interrogated, in museum drawers for nearly two centuries.

The authors' broader call for systematic tomographic surveys of nineteenth-century European amber collections is technically feasible but institutionally demanding: beam time at major synchrotron facilities is oversubscribed, curatorial access protocols vary significantly across national jurisdictions, and the volumetric datasets generated, on the order of several terabytes per specimen, require substantial computational infrastructure for segmentation, rendering, and archival. Nevertheless, the cost-benefit calculus is compelling: the described specimens from a single collector's holdings yielded one new morphological characterisation, two additional insect family records from the Goethe collection specifically, and a refined phylogenetic placement -- all from material that had never been studied with dedicated rigour.