Abstract
ALTHOUGH fossil remains furnish us with abundant evidence of the antiquity of many structural characters in animals, and permit us to surmise a like antiquity of certain habits, it is not often that we find preserved the proofs of the latter. The leaf herewith figured, collected in the Miocene shales of Florissant, Colorado, by two of my students, Messrs. Duce and Rusk, shows the work of a leaf-cutting bee. Evidently the specialised and peculiar habit of cutting out pieces of leaf to use in forming the nest was as highly developed, perhaps, a million years ago as it is to-day. The bee itself has also been obtained, and described as Megachile praedicta, Ckll., 1908.
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COCKERELL, T. A Tertiary Leaf-cutting Bee. Nature 82, 429 (1910). https://doi.org/10.1038/082429a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/082429a0
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