to save more of these unique pieces for the Italian dona. During those years, she also became acquainted with German and US researchers who were interested in the glimpse into the past offered by the amber fauna.

Slowly, Costa's private collection grew. In 1982, she opened the Amber Museum at the Villa Bentz, a neoclassic city mansion dating back to 1919, and a suitable setting for such an impressive collection of amber.

The Costas had help from Brandt Ghepart who had worked for 15 years at the Museum of Natural History of Cleveland, Ohio with the painstaking mission of organizing the amber collection there and telling its story through the museum's displays. Like the Costas, Ghepart had first arrived as a tourist on his sailboat into Puerto Plata. A paleontologist by profession, Ghepart entranced when he viewed her Puerto Plata collection, swiftly sold his sailboat and decided to stay on to help turn Didi Costa's Amber Museum into reality.

Dominican amber comes from the country's septentrional mountain range, at heights of 600 to 1,300 meters, from where miners carve through the inner layers of the land, dreaming of finding that rare piece that would reap hundreds of dollars for its scientific or esthetic value.

Important pieces on exhibit at the Costas' museum include amber fossils containing such things as a small white snail, wasp's nests, lizard eggs, a centipede, a queen termite, a scorpion and two beetles mating. One clear yellow amber stone holds many mosquitoes that appear to yet hover above marshy lands. Other stones encase bear seeds, petals, butterflies and even complete flowers.

One of the Costas' pieces has even graced the silver screen: it was their mosquito-encased amber that was

used in the Steven Spielberg film Jurassic Park. The Hollywood hit was based on the book by Michael Crichton and envisaged dinosaurs being fully reproduced through their DNA which, the story said, was found in an amber stone containing a mosquito from the Dominican Republic In real life, this theory was later validated by California scientist George Poinar, who served as consultant to the film and continues to research Dominican amber.

The 42.5-centimeter lizard fossil on exhibit in Puerto Plata is probably the most talked-about piece of the Museum. Among the rarest amber specimens, however, is one containing hairs of the hutia, an extinct mammal indigenous to the island. Like the Missionela didicostae spider, this fossil is valuable evidence to support the theory that the Dominican Republic was once part of South America. Historically, these animals have not been found on islands, only on continental land masses.

Another Guinness World Record on amber could also be in the making. Dr. Carla Dove of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C is currently studying what is being described as the biggest bio-inclusion feather fossil in the world, with a piece that is currently on exhibit at the Amber Museum. This 6-by-2-centimeter fossilized right-wing feather of a bird she estimates dates 25 to 30 million years that may provide information regarding prehistoric avifauna of the island.

Scientists continue to probe history as witnessed by Dominican amber. David Penney explains their interest "While what is preserved in amber is important whafs not there is equally important" By comparing the amber fossil fauna with the fauna living in the Dominican Republic today, paleontologists may come to new conclusions on the origins and evolution of the island of Hispaniola and the Caribbean as a whole.