A new study reports that hundreds of mummified bees have been found in their cocoons. These cocoons, produced about 3,000 years ago, were discovered at a new paleontological site discovered on Portugal’s Odemira coast. About 2975 years ago, Pharaoh Siamun ruled in Lower Egypt; The Zhou dynasty in China ended; Solomon would replace David on the throne of Israel; in what is now Portugal the tribes were advancing towards the end of the Bronze Age. In particular, on the southwest coast of Portugal, where Odemira is now located, something strange and rare happened: hundreds of bees died in their cocoons and were preserved down to the smallest anatomical details.

The cocoons discovered today were obtained as a result of an extremely rare method of fossilization – often 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 detect not only the anatomical details that define the bee’s species, but also its sex and even the amount of monofloral pollen released by the mother when constructing the cocoon,” said Carlos Neto de Carvalho, scientific coordinator of Geopark Naturtejo and Lisbon Collaboration of the Instituto Dom Luiz researcher at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Ciências ULisboa (Portugal).

The paleontologist says the project that led to the discovery identified four paleontological sites containing a high density of bee cocoon fossils, with these fossils reaching thousands of individuals per square meter of side length. These sites were found between Vila Nova de Milfontes on the coast of Odemira and Odesaise, a municipality that strongly supports the conduct of this scientific study and allows it to be dated with carbon 14.

“Since 100-million-year-old fossil nests and hives have been attributed to the bee family, the reality is that those who used them are almost non-fossilized,” says paleontologist Andrea Baucon, co-author of the study. University of Siena.

The discovered cocoons, which were produced about 3000 years ago, protect the young individuals of the Eucera bee, which have never seen the light of day, as if they were in a sarcophagus. It is one of about 700 bee species still present in mainland Portugal. A recently discovered paleontological site shows the interior of cocoons lined with a complex thread of organic polymer produced by the mother.

Inside you can sometimes find traces of monofloral pollen left by the mother, on which the larvae fed in the early stages of life. The use of microcomputed tomography provides a perfect three-dimensional image of mummified bees inside sealed cocoons.

With more than 20,000 extant species worldwide, bees are important pollinators whose populations have been significantly reduced due to human activities associated with climate change. Understanding the environmental causes that led to the death and mummification of bee populations around 3,000 years ago can help understand and establish strategies for resilience to climate change.

In the case of the southwest coast, the climatic period about 3,000 years ago was generally characterized by colder and wetter winters than now.

“A sharp drop in nighttime temperature at the end of winter or prolonged flooding of the region that is already out of the rainy season could have led to death from the cold or the suffocation and mummification of hundreds of these tiny bees,” explains Carlos Neto. de Carvalho.

The findings were published in the journal Paleontology Articles.

This work is the result of Ibero-Italian collaboration that brought together researchers from Instituto Dom Luiz—Ciências ULisboa, DISTAV—University of Genoa (Italy), MARE—University of Coimbra (Portugal), Tomara Polytechnic Institute (Portugal), Portugal. 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). Source