University of Bristol: Unusual fossil reveals last meal of prehistoric pollinator - India Education Diary

The animal’s remains were unearthed by researchers at the University of Bristol and the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGPAS) who were able to study its fossil faecal matter, which was composed solely of pollen.

Besides being a visitor of angiosperms – flowering plants – researchers now have conclusive evidence that the new fossil named Pelretes vivificus also fed on their pollen.

“The beetle is associated with clusters of pollen grains, suggesting that short-winged flower beetles visited angiosperms in the Cretaceous.

Erik Tihelka, entomologist and palaeontologist at the School of Earth Sciences, added: “The fossil is associated with beetle coprolites – fossil faecal pellets – that provide a very unusual but important insight into the diet of short-winged flower beetles in the Cretaceous.

The fossil faecal pellets are completely composed of pollen, the same type that is found in clusters surrounding the beetle and attached to its body.

This finding provides a direct link between early flowering plants in the Cretaceous and their insect visitors; it shows that these insect fossils were not just incidentally co-preserved with pollen, but that there was a genuine biological association between the two.”.

Some scientists have attributed the huge evolutionary success of angiosperms to their mutualistic relationships with insect pollinators, but fossil evidence of Cretaceous pollinators has so far been scarce.

“The pollen associated with the beetle can be assigned to the fossil genus Tricolpopollenites.

Liqin Li, fossil pollen specialist from NIGPAS who contributed to the study

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