The oldest bee in history is 100 million years old: fossilized insect with pollen found

    A 100-million-year-old bee was found fossilized along with pollen, blocked by an army of parasites that stuck it in the resin

    He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him

    A 100-million-year-old bee was found fossilized along with pollen. The incredible discovery was made thanks to a probable "error" of the insect, blocked by an army of beetle parasites and trapped in the resin of the tree, where it was later found by George Poinar Jr, a researcher at Oregon State. University (USA).





    The female specimen has actually been identified as a member of a different family and species of bees as they are known today, but has been defined as a real forerunner, fossilized with the pollen with which it was feeding and with parasites that still attack modern insects.

    Causation, fatal to the bee, is of great importance to science today, because it has shed light on the early days of bees, a key component in the evolutionary history and diversification of flowering plants, which have adapted to them to survive: as is known, in fact, the bees, resting on the flowers to feed themselves, transport the gametes, determining their reproduction.

    Today, as then, all pollinators including bees (considered the main ones because they are the only pollinating group that feeds exclusively on nectar and pollen for the entire life cycle) are of fundamental importance for the biodiversity on which our very life depends. . Yet we often forget it, so much so as to force these insects to a life of hardship now endangered.

    The oldest bee in history is 100 million years old: fossilized insect with pollen found

    Foto: ©Oregon State University

    The fossilized bee, which had recently been on one or more flowers given the numerous pollen grains on the find, shares some physical characteristics with modern bees but also with those of some wasps, which however are notoriously carnivorous and of which it is known much less evolutionarily about their diet.

    “The documentation of fossil bees is quite extensive - explains Poinar - but most of them come from the last 65 million years and look a lot like modern bees. Fossils like the one in this study can tell us about the changes some types of insects underwent when they started feeding on pollen ”.



    Giving the "the", in fact, to the diversification of flowering plants. The discovery, therefore, arises from the archetypes of magic bee-life relationship.

    But not only bees, because the find is also one of the oldest concerning beetle parasites.

    The oldest bee in history is 100 million years old: fossilized insect with pollen found

    Foto: ©Oregon State University


    "It is certainly possible that the high number of parasites caused the bee to accidentally fall into the resin," concludes the researcher.

    The work was published in BioOne Complete.

    Read also:


    • The bee declared the most important living being on the planet, but risks extinction
    • Bees towards extinction: over 1000 species at risk in North America
    • Hives as you've never seen them: what happens when bees give vent to their creativity

    Sources: Oregon State University / BioOne Complete

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