TPO45

The passage and the lecture are both about the possibility of existing bees on Earth 200 million years ago. The author presents three theories to support that the structures have been found in Arizona were not created by bees. The lecturer, on the other hand, refutes all the mentioned ideas in the text and believes that these theories are not convincing and it is possible that structures were manufactured by bees.

In the passage, the writer begins by stating that since the first bee's fossil which has been found is 100 million years old, the 200 years old fossilized structures cannot be made by bees. The professor, however, asserts that bees' fossils can preserve in particular conditions provided by fossilized tree resin. Because these kinds of trees with such a resin were rare 200 million years ago, the fossils could not be preserved.

The author also claims that according to the absence of flowering plants in that era and due to the strong biological relationship between bees and these plants, the bees could not have existed before the flowering plants' era. Conversely, the speaker argues this viewpoint, mentioning that bees could have existed before flowering plants and fed non-flowering plants like pine trees. She further explains that bees can be adapted to flowers after the appearance of these plants.

Finally, the writer points out that the fossilized structures found in Arizona have some differences from bees' nests and maybe they were made by wood-boring beetles. In contrast, the lecturer states that the chemical analyses conducted on discovered fossils support the similarity of the materials between current bees' nests and the fossilized chambers and both of them have the same waterproofing materials in their composition.