[Pollinator] 100 MYO bee found in amber

[Kimberly Winter]

>From National Geo:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/10/061025-oldest-bee.html

Photo in the News: Oldest-Ever Bee Found in Amber

RELATED
Buzz Kill: Wild Bees and Flowers Disappearing, Study Says (July 21, 2006)
Oldest Known Spiderweb Found in Ancient Amber (June 22, 2006)
Photos: How Flowering Plants Changed the World
October 25, 2006—This tiny, ancient insect has created an enormous buzz.

Melittosphex burmensis, which has been trapped in amber for the past hundred 
million years, is the oldest bee fossil ever discovered. It lived in 
northern Myanmar (Burma) in Southeast Asia about 35 million to 45 million 
years earlier than the next oldest specimens known to science.

The ancient bee shares some traits with its modern relatives but is also 
quite unlike any other known bee (honeybee photos, facts, more).

"The [previous] oldest bee fossils that we have are essentially fauna that 
are pretty much like modern groups that you could go out and collect today," 
said Bryan Danforth, associate professor of entomology at Cornell University 
in Ithaca, New York.

Danforth and colleague George Poinar of Oregon State University in Corvallis 
will report the find in the October 27 issue of the journal Science.

"What's very interesting about this fossil is that it isn't really 
attributable to any modern group that we can think of or any bee family that 
exists," Danforth said.

In fact, the diminutive insect, which is a mere 0.12 inch (2.95 millimeters) 
long, appears to have characteristics of both bees and wasps—and may even be 
a link between the two.

"This fossil may help us understand when wasps, which were mostly just 
carnivores, turned into bees that could pollinate plants and serve a 
completely different biological function," Poinar said in a press statement.

The find does come with one disappointing sting: The bee is a male. Because 
only female bees collect pollen, the fossil might not yield many clues about 
exactly how ancient bees pollinated plants.

But the fact that an ancestor of an important modern pollinator existed back 
then could help scientists explain the rapid expansion of floral diversity 
in the early to mid-Cretaceous (the Cretaceous period lasted between 145.5 
and 65.5 million years ago).

—Brian Handwerk

• More Photos in the News
• Today's 15 Most Read Stories
• Free Email Newsletter: Focus on Photography

Image © Science




~Kim

--> Bee Ready for National Pollinator Week:  June 24-30, 2007.  Contact us 
for more information at www.pollinator.org <--

Kimberly Winter, Ph.D.
International Coordinator
North American Pollinator Protection Campaign
Internet: www.nappc.org, www.pollinator.org
Ph: (301) 219-7030