Rovno amber

Rovno amber, occasionally called Ukrainian amber, is amber found in the Rivne Oblast and surrounding regions of Ukraine and Belarus. the amber is dated between Late Eocene and early Miocene, and suggested to be contemporaneous to Baltic amber. Major exploration and mining of the amber didn't start until the 1990's.

The late Eocene amber is hosted in the Mezhigorje Formation, with early reports of occurrences in the underling Obukhov Formation as well. The formations are found along the Northwestern margin of the Ukrainian Crystalline Shield exposed in the Rivne region of the Ukraine and across the boarder near Rechitsa in the Gomel Region of Belarus. The granite basement rock was overlain by sandy to clayey deposits that were host to alluvial amber. The two formations total between 2–7 m (6.6–23.0 ft) in thickness, both containing interbeds or mixtures of brown coals and carbonized vegetation. Both formations are sandy to clayey in texture, with the Obukhov having more clayey glauconite-quartz plus sandy loess, while the Mezhigorje is mostly medium to fine grained sands of a greenish gray tone, and with occasional iron impregnation and layering.

Small amounts of rough, partially worked, and fully shaped amber have been recovered from Paleolithic and Neolithic sites in the Dnieper area. At a site near Mezhyrich, four large mammuth bone huts attributed to Cro-Magnon Homo sapiens included over 300 pieces of amber attributed to Rovno origins. Many of the amber pieces are roughly fashioned into triangular and circular shapes. Dating of the site ranges between 13,300 and 10,500 B.C., when the regions of Baltic amber deposits in Kalingrad and Lithuania were still covered with ice-sheets. A small female statuette of carved amber was found near Dobranichevka, while a 12 cm (4.72 in) disc with a central hole, and a hunting scene carved on one side was found in a Globular Amphora culture tomb in the Dubno district of Ukraine.

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