TPO 45

In this set of materials, both the reading and the lecturer discuss possible reasons for existing bees as early as 200 million years ago because very old bee nests' fossils are discovered. Although the passage claims some arguments against this theory, the speaker refutes all of the arguments described in this reporter.

To start off, the passage points out that the actual bee's fossils have not been founded from 200 million years ago. The lecturer, in contrast, rejects this by claiming that bees bodies could not preserve in fossils except in the situation that the fossil has a certain tree resin, so there is not any fossil of bees because that kind of tree did not exist 200 million years ago.

Going through the next approach, the reading passage states that 200 million years ago the flowering plants did not exist; hence, the bees could not have existed without food. However, the professor argues that the early bees did not dependent on the flowering plants. She adds that the bees used the non-flowering plants like the fern, and after flowering plants have evolved, and they changed to use them.

Finally, although the passage says that the discovered fossil has some differences from modern bee nests, and it could be a nest of another insect such as wood-boring beetles, the speaker disagrees by mentioning that modern bees use some specific chemical to waterproof their nests, and chemical similar to it have been found in the discovered fossil structure. Therefore, this evidence supports the theory of bee existence.