Romanian woman picked up a rock from a stream. It held her door open for decades

NewsThieves walked right past it. Turns out it was the real treasureAmber is fossilized tree resin that forms over millions of years. A 7.7-pound piece once used as a doorstop in Romania is now on display at the Buzău County Museum. (General stock image)By DreamPictures | Getty ImagesLook around your house. Could something ordinary be hiding a big secret? For one Romanian family, the answer was yes.For decades, an elderly woman used a heavy reddish stone to hold her door open. She had picked it up from a stream near Colți, a village in southeast Romania, People reported. The stone was actually a 7.7-pound chunk of amber worth about $1.1 million. Amber is tree sap’s tougher cousin. It’s hardened tree resin that turned into a fossil over a very long time, National Geographic explains. Trees make resin to seal up cuts in their bark.Thieves once broke into the woman’s home. They took gold jewelry but left the heavy rock behind, the science site Futura reported.After she died in 1991, a relative who inherited the house took a closer look. He sold the stone to the Romanian government. Experts in Poland found it is between 38 million and 70 million years old, ScienceAlert reported. That means it may have formed while dinosaurs still roamed Earth.The amber is now a national treasure on display at the Buzău County Museum, where it has been since 2022. Its director told the Spanish newspaper El País it is one of the largest pieces of amber in the world.This kind of amber, called rumanite, is found only in Romania, according to The Times of India. Its deep red, brown and nearly black colors set it apart from the lighter amber found near the Baltic Sea. Chris Pugh covers trending news and national breaking stories, focusing on the moments, conversations, and cultural flashpoints shaping the national news cycle. Chris worked as a digital reporter for...This article was produced with assistance from AI tools and reviewed by Cleveland.com staff.