Amber is any natural resin which oozed its way out of a tree and eventually fossilized at any time from recent times back to the Carboniferous Period of some 300 million years ago. Amber is generally yellow or yellow brown and translucent, and it is pretty when polished. In its fresh form, resin has been known to collect insects or leaves in its sticky clutches, preserving them in visually perfect splendor for thousands of years. Resins which can become amber are found wherever certain kinds of trees oozing sap (a few conifers and angiosperms) are found--almost everywhere in the northern hemisphere of our planet.