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.
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This is really astonishing that a fossil is preserved by mother nature for so long.
while we take just a few years in utilizing the resources created by these fossils.
May this fossil reveal some new findings about habitat at that time.
[OT] And if goe in hands of some crazy billioner that may create a new Jurassic park too.
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Melittosphex burmensis, The Oldest ever bee found !!
but we are a long way away from extracting a complete DNA strand or building it up from broken DNA fragments when it comes to extracting from Amber.
