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oa STRUCTURAL INVESTIGATION OF THE MACROMOLECULAR COMPONENT OF BALTIC AMBER BY SELECTIVE CHEMICAL DEGRADATION
- Publisher: European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers
- Source: Conference Proceedings, 30th International Meeting on Organic Geochemistry (IMOG 2021), Sep 2021, Volume 2021, p.1 - 2
Abstract
The constitution of Baltic amber, the role of succinic acid and, more generally, of ester bonds in the constitution of macromolecular components of amber has been further investigated by chemical degradation of the solvent insoluble part of Baltic amber using butanolysis (BuOH/HCl). Succinic acid derivatives were the sole compounds released upon butanolysis whereas other compounds which could correspond to the alcohol counterparts of succinates could not be detected by GC-MS. This result indicate that these counterparts are all located on high molecular weight structural moieties. Succinic acid thus plays a key role as cross-linking agent between oligomeric structural moieties based on diterpenoids necessarily bound by at least one non-hydrolysable C-O or C-C bond.