Skip to content News Oceans Seafloor amber may hold hints of a tsunami 115 million years ago Formations in the tree resin point to massive waves that sucked a forest into the sea A layer of amber tops a piece of sandstone. These sediments, unearthed from a quarry in Japan, were once on the deep seafloor. Formations in the golden resin hint at ancient tsunamis. A. Kubota et al./Scientific Reports 2025 By Katherine Kornei 11 hours ago Wavelike patterns in 115-million-year-old amber suggest that a long-ago tsunami inundated what is now northern Japan, researchers report May 15 in Scientific Reports. Tsunamis can be destructive and, to anything alive nearby, often terrifying. But the physical damage wrought by these giant waves eventually erodes away, typically leaving behind little evidence of their passage. As a result, there’s scant records of tsunamis stretching back beyond the current geologic epoch, which began roughly 12,000 years ago. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.