The ancestors of modern carpenter bees may have vanished from Earth roughly 65 million years ago, around the same time the dinosaurs were wiped out, a new study finds.
Researchers examined the DNA of four types of carpenter bees from every continent, except Antarctica, to search for clues about their evolutionary relationships. Peering back into the lineages of the bees, the scientists noticed something unusual with all four groups, beginning roughly 65 million years ago.
“We can track periods of diversification and stasis,” lead study author Sandra Rehan, an assistant professor of biological sciences at the University of New Hampshire,told LiveScience. “There was a period where there was no genetic diversification happening for millions of years — a real dearth of speciation. This is an indication of a mass extinction event.”
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Read the full, original story here: Ancient Bees May Have Been Wiped Out with the Dinosaurs
