Almost 3,000-year-old mummified bees have actually been discovered in Odemira, Portugal, supplying rare insights into ancient bee species and their environment. Image taken under binocular lens, corresponding to specimen details of the dorsum. This specimen was drawn out from the sediment filling a cocoon. Credit: Andrea Baucon
A brand-new research study reports the finding of hundreds of mummified bees enclosed in their cocoons from almost three millennia earlier. These preserved cocoons were unearthed at a newly discovered paleontological website along the Odemira shoreline in Portugal.
Around 2,975 years ago, numerous significant occasions were unfolding around the world: Pharaoh Siamun was the ruler of Lower Egypt; the Zhou Dynasty was continuous in China; Solomon was poised to succeed David as king of Israel. In what is now Portugal, regional tribes were approaching the end of the Bronze Age. In specific, on the southwest coast of Portugal, where is now Odemira, something unusual and rare had actually simply occurred: numerous bees died inside their cocoons and were preserved in the tiniest anatomical detail.
The cocoons, now discovered, resulted from a very unusual fossilization approach– usually the skeleton of these insects is rapidly decomposed due to its chitinous structure, which is a natural compound.
Nearly 3,000-year-old mummified bees have been found in Odemira, Portugal, providing unusual insights into ancient bee species and their environment. In specific, on the southwest coast of Portugal, where is now Odemira, something odd and unusual had just happened: hundreds of bees passed away inside their cocoons and were maintained in the smallest physiological detail.
X-ray micro-computed tomography views of a male Eucera bee (ventral) inside a sealed cocoon. The cocoons now discovered, produced practically three thousand years earlier, preserve as in a sarcophagus the young adults of the Eucera bee that never got to see the light of day. X-ray micro-computed tomography views of a male Eucera bee (ventral) inside a sealed cocoon.
X-ray micro-computed tomography views of a male Eucera bee (ventral) inside a sealed cocoon. View gotten in the ICTP ElettramicroCT, Triestes Elettra synchrotron radiation center in Italy. The image reveals the architecture of the excavated brood chamber closed by the spiral cap, containing an adult bee near to abandoning the cell. Credit: Federico Bernardini/ICTP
” The degree of conservation of these bees is so remarkable that we had the ability to identify not only the physiological details that figure out the kind of bee, but also its sex and even the supply of monofloral pollen left by the mother when she developed the cocoon,” says Carlos Neto de Carvalho, scientific planner of Geopark Naturtejo, a UNESCO Global Geopark, and working together researcher at Instituto Dom Luiz, at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon– Ciências ULisboa (Portugal).
The paleontologist says that the job that caused this discovery recognized four paleontological websites with a high density of bee cocoon fossils, reaching thousands in a square determining one meter on a side. These websites were discovered between Vila Nova de Milfontes and Odeceixe, on the coast of Odemira, a municipality that offered strong support to the execution of this scientific research study, enabling its dating by carbon 14.
Image taken under binocular lens, representing specimen details of the dorsum. This specimen was drawn out from the sediment filling a cocoon. Credit: Andrea Baucon
” With a fossil record of 100 million years of hives and nests credited to the bee household, the truth is that the fossilization of its user is practically non-existent,” enhances Andrea Baucon, one of the co-authors of the present work, a paleontologist at the University of Siena (Italy).
The cocoons now discovered, produced nearly 3 thousand years back, preserve as in a sarcophagus the young adults of the Eucera bee that never got to see the light of day. This is among about 700 species of bees that still exist in mainland Portugal today. The recently found paleontological website reveals the interior of the cocoons covered with a detailed thread produced by the mother and composed of an organic polymer.
Inside, you can often find whats left of the monofloral pollen left by the mother, with which the larva would have fed in the very first times of life. Making use of microcomputed tomography allowed us to have a ideal and three-dimensional picture of the mummified bees inside sealed cocoons.
X-ray micro-computed tomography views of a male Eucera bee (forward) inside a sealed cocoon. The image reveals the architecture of the excavated brood chamber closed by the spiral cap, containing an adult bee close to deserting the cell.
Bees have more than twenty thousand existing species around the world and are very important pollinators, whose populations have actually suffered a substantial decrease due to human activities and which have actually been associated with climate modification. Comprehending the environmental factors that caused the death and mummification of bee populations nearly 3 thousand years earlier could help to comprehend and establish strength strategies to climate modification. When it comes to the southwest coast, the climatic period that was experienced almost 3 thousand years ago was marked, in basic, by colder and rainier winters than the present ones.
” A sharp decrease in the nocturnal temperature level at the end of winter season or an extended flooding of the area currently outside the rainy season might have caused the death, by cold or asphyxiation, and mummification of numerous these small beesb” discusses Carlos Neto de Carvalho.
Recommendation: “Eucera bees (Hymenoptera, Apidae, Eucerini) maintained in their brood cells from late Holocene (middle Neoglacial) palaeosols of southwest Portugal” by Carlos Neto de Carvalho, Andrea Baucon, Davide Badano, Pedro Proença Cunha, Cristiana Ferreira, Silvério Figueiredo, Fernando Muñiz, João Belo, Federico Bernardini and Mário Cachão, 27 July 2023, Papers in Paleontology.DOI: 10.1002/ spp2.1518.
This research study is the result of an Ibero-Italian cooperation that united scientists from Instituto Dom Luiz– Ciências ULisboa, DISTAV– University of Genova (Italy), MARE– University of Coimbra (Portugal), the Polytechnic Institute of Tomar (Portugal), the Portuguese Centre of Geo-History and Prehistory, the Abdus Salam Research Center in Theoretical Physics, University of Siena (Italy), University of Venice (Italy) and University of Seville (Spain).
