Portuguese and Italian scientists, with Spanish participation I discovered hundreds of bees mummified in their cocoons. These packages produced almost 3000 years agoIt was discovered at a new paleontological site discovered on Portugal’s Odemira coast.
About 2,975 years ago, Pharaoh Siamon ruled Lower Egypt; The Zhou dynasty ruled in China; Solomon took the throne of Israel in place of David; In what is now Portugal, the tribes were advancing towards the end of the Bronze Age. But in addition to all these great historical events, something strange and strange had happened on the southwest coast of Portugal, where Odemira is now: Hundreds of bees have died inside their cocoons, and since then, Perfectly preserved, including the smallest anatomical detail.
The cocoons now discovered are the result of a highly unusual fossilization method: normally the skeleton of these insects decomposes rapidly due to the composition of chitin, an organic compound.
“The degree of conservation of these bees is so extraordinary that we were able to determine not only the anatomical details that determine the type of bee, but also its sex. including the contribution of monofloral pollen left by the mother as she builds the cocoon“, says Carlos Neto de Carvalho, scientific coordinator of the Naturtejo Geopark and researcher of the Faculty of Science at the University of Lisbon. The findings are published in the journal Nature. Articles in Paleontology.
The paleontologist claims that the work that led to this discovery identified four paleontological sites with high concentrations of bee cocoon fossils; The number of these fossils is expressed in the thousands on just one meter of a square. These deposits were found between Vila Nova de Milfontes and Odeceixe on the coast of Odemira, a municipality that gave strong support to the conduct of this scientific study and allowed carbon 14 dating.
“From the 100-million-year-old fossil record of nests and hives attributed to the bee family, the reality is that fossilization is virtually non-existent,” says Andrea Baucon, a university paleontologist and co-author of this paper. of Siena.
like inside a sarcophagus
The cocoons now discovered were produced about 3,000 years ago. they hide the bee’s young adults like a sarcophagus Eucera never came to see the light. This is one of about 700 species of bees that still exist today in mainland Portugal. The newly discovered paleontological field shows the inside of cocoons covered with a complex thread of organic polymer produced by the mother.
It can sometimes contain traces of monofloral pollen left by the mother, on which the larvae will feed in the early stages of life. The use of microcomputed tomography provides a perfect and three-dimensional image. mummified bees inside sealed cocoons.
There are currently more than 20,000 different bee species worldwide. Their role as pollinators is critical to Earth’s food resources. But despite this, their population has suffered a significant decline, not only due to climate change, but also due to human activities. Understand the ecological causes that led to the death and mummification of bee populations nearly 3,000 years ago It can help understand and build resilience strategies to climate change.
In the case of the southwest coast, the climate period almost 3,000 years ago was marked by generally colder and wetter winters than today.
“A sharp drop in night temperature at the end of winter or prolonged flooding of the areaEven outside the rainy season, they may have caused death from cold or suffocation and the mummification of hundreds of these tiny bees,” explains Carlos Neto. de Carvalho.
This work is the result of an Ibero-Italian collaboration that brought together researchers from the Instituto Dom Luiz—Ciências ULisboa, DISTAV—University of Genoa (Italy), MARE—University of Coimbra (Portugal), Tomar Polytechnic Institute (Portugal). , Portuguese Center for Geohistory and Prehistory, Abdus Salam Research Center for Theoretical Physics, University of Siena (Italy), University of Venice (Italy) and University of Seville (Spain).
Reference work: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/spp2.1518
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