When the Bones Were Good, These Bees Buried Their Babies
The New York Times••general
Key Points:
- Scientists discovered petrified nests of prehistoric bees inside tooth sockets of rodent fossils in a cave in the Dominican Republic, as detailed in a recent Royal Society Open Science paper.
- The cave, known as Cueva de Mono, contained thousands of bones deposited over 20,000 years, including remains of about 50 vertebrate species such as sloths, lizards, tortoises, crocodiles, and extinct relatives of Caribbean rodents called hutias.
- The fossil deposits originated from giant owls that regurgitated bone-rich pellets, creating an environment with decomposing fossils and empty bone cavities ideal for bee nesting.
- Paleontologist Lazaro Viñola López and his team uncovered these findings during excavations, noting that
