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Last Updated: Thursday October 26 2006 08:37 GMT

Oldest bee gets experts buzzing

The world's oldest bee

Scientists are buzzing with excitement after finding what they think is the oldest bee ever.

The tiny 100-million-year old bee was found by the scientists in a piece of something called amber.

Amber is what the sticky stuff that comes out of trees - called sap - turns into after millions of years.

The bee got stuck in tree sap when it was alive and then died when it couldn't escape. When the sap turned into amber the bee was left inside it.

The scientists are really excited about their find because it shows them a lot about how bees have developed over the years.

It's thought that millions of years ago there were only wasps but over time some of them turned into bees. This new bee fossil has bits of both buzzing bugs.

One of the scientists working on the project said: "This is the oldest known bee we've ever been able to identify, and it shares some of the features of wasps.

"But overall it's more bee than wasp, and gives us a pretty good idea of when these two types of insects were separating on their evolutionary paths."



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