Open Veils · Answer
Is Melittosphex burmensis the oldest bee species?
Melittosphex burmensis has been reclassified out of Apoidea entirely and is no longer considered a bee at all. The current title-holder for oldest confirmed bee fossil belongs to Cretotrigona prisca (~70 mya, New Jersey amber). The 'oldest bee' framing was always a product of a single researcher's taxonomic interpretation, subsequently rejected by broader peer review. The question of bee origins in deep Cretaceous time remains genuinely open.
Evidence
- When George Poinar Jr. of Oregon State University described Melittosphex burmensis from Burmese amber in 2006, he characterized it as 'an extinct lineage of pollen-collecting Apoidea sister to the modern bees' — placing it at roughly 100 million years old and making it the oldest proposed bee on record.
- Subsequent morphological and phylogenetic research rejected both claims.
- The current consensus oldest confirmed bee fossil is Cretotrigona prisca, a corbiculate stingless bee from Late Cretaceous New Jersey amber dating to approximately 70 million years ago — some 30 million years younger than the Burmese specimens.
- Researchers in the tradition of Michael Engel (University of Kansas), who has published extensively on Hymenoptera paleontology, have long argued that the morphological criteria used to identify 'bee' characters in compression and amber fossils are easily conflated with wasp lineages.
- Discoscapa apicula, also described by Poinar from the same Hukawng Valley amber deposit in 2020, was simultaneously promoted as a co-holder of that title.