Most dominican amber fossils, for instance, were formed from resin that flowed out of the Hymenaea protera, a leguminous tree that's now extinct.

While researching evolution and microbial ecology, she investigated the association between leguminous plants and nitrogen-fixing bacteria.

In the Dominican Republic, for example, an extinct leguminous tree provided most of the resin responsible for the area’s 16-million-year-old amber fossils.