The Center of 'Orsten' Research and Exploration (= C.O.R.E.) and the international CORE Group were established in 2005. By November 2011 the CORE Group has increased to 37 members from no less than 9 countries and from 4 continents and Japan ( (see the members by clicking above). Our main issues are to concentrate the expertise about 'Orsten' type fossils, the lagerstätten in which these occur, and related topics, and, last but not least to disseminate the information on the 'Orsten'. Therefore thsi website was created, with simple tools, so not as perfect as others, BUT we try to steadily add more items, correct and update as regular as possible.

At present – and regrettably – we still have some bias on information about the Swedish 'Orsten' lagerstätten. Yet we do hope to add more from other 'Orsten' fossiles sites, such as in China, the UK (Comley), Poland, and Australia progressively. The new localities from these countries not only contribute significantly to our knowledge about and around the 'Orsten' by adding different species, but they also add to our knowledge about other things like lithological, perservational and taphonomical issues, and they expanded the time frame considerably. And, of course, the new localities and their fossils helped significantly to improve and widen our evolutionary interpretations, as you can see, e.g., from our 2007 paper published in Nature in 2007 and the 2010 paper in Current Biology (click on publications above).

Selected publications are also available from other CORE members – otherwise get their email address under contacts and ask directly for PDFs.