Order Diptera - The Flies
View Sewanee's Baltic Amber Collection
The Sewanee Amber Collection consists of 154 pieces of fossil-bearing Baltic amber. The amber was collected from a mine near Kaliningrad, Russia (formerly Koenigsberg, Prussia) in 1889 by American mining engineer Henry de Meli. In 1945, de Meli’s daughter Marie Bischoff fled Dresden, Germany with the collection before the advancing Russian army. The collection was ultimately given to the University of the South in 1965, where it remains in the University Archives. Retired University of the South Biology professor Harry Yeatman and his wife Jean Yeatman were responsible for acquiring the collection for the University and for identifying the organisms trapped in the amber.
