A single bee fossil from Hindon Maar in Otago, New Zealand, shows that a bee in the genus Leioproctus lived in the region about 14.6 million years ago. Its wing veins support that broad classification, but missing anatomical details prevent researchers from determining how it relates to living New Zealand bees. The discovery raises a genuine question about the island’s bee history—not a contradiction of evolution.
What is the fossil, and where was it found?
The specimen is a female named Leioproctus (Otagocolletes) barrydonovani, described by Michael S. Engel and Uwe Kaulfuss in a 2025 paper in Zoosystema. It is a single, articulated compression fossil preserved in dark grey organic mudstone from Hindon Maar, in Otago, southern New Zealand. The male is unknown, and the fossil is held by the Department of Geology at the University of Otago. It is the first described fossil bee from Zealandia.
Hindon Maar’s fossil-bearing deposits record lake sediments and nearby warm-temperate forest, including Nothofagus, podocarps and other broadleaf trees. The fossil is important because it places a Leioproctus-like bee in this region deep in the past, while leaving its relationship to living bees unsettled.
How old is it, and how was that age determined?
The often-quoted age of about 14.6 million years is the age assigned to the Hindon Maar deposits, not a direct measurement of the bee. Engel and Kaulfuss report that the site’s age is supported by palynomorphs and a radiometric measurement of basanite from one of the maars. The cited result is 14.603 ± 0.093 million years, measured by Kaulfuss and colleagues in 2018.
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What does the fossil tell us about its identity?
The authors assigned the specimen to the genus Leioproctus, a broad placement supported by its wing venation. The venation resembles that of native New Zealand Leioproctus and distinguishes the fossil from the compared genera Hylaeus and Lasioglossum. The authors named a new subgenus, Otagocolletes, for it.
That identification has limits. Parts of the mouthparts and legs are missing or obscured, and attempts to expose additional details were unsuccessful. The visible venation also differs from the living New Zealand Leioproctus subgenera the authors compared. So the fossil can be classified broadly without establishing a close relationship to any living species.
Why does it raise questions about New Zealand’s bees?
The 2025 paper cites 42 bee species recorded in New Zealand, 28 of them endemic, drawing on counts attributed to Donovan (2007/2016). It counts 18 endemic Leioproctus species. The fossil shows that a member of Leioproctus in the broad sense was present in the region by the middle Miocene; it does not show that the modern endemic species descend from this particular bee.
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That distinction creates the biogeographic puzzle. If an ancient Leioproctus lineage lived in New Zealand, what happened to it—and how, if at all, is it connected to the comparatively limited set of living native species? The fossil’s anatomy is not detailed enough to answer those questions on its own.
Which explanations are possible?
Engel and Kaulfuss discuss several possibilities rather than selecting a definitive history. The alternatives make different predictions about whether living New Zealand Leioproctus are closely related to the fossil:
- Ancient diversification followed by extinction: An older lineage may have diversified in the region, with many branches later disappearing. Any surviving descendants should show a relationship to the fossil, although this specimen lacks enough detail to test that directly.
- Limited diversification: The lineage may have persisted but produced relatively few species. This scenario also requires evidence linking modern bees to the ancient form.
- Later arrival of modern lineages: Today’s New Zealand Leioproctus may not be closely related to the fossil at the subgenus level and may have arrived later, perhaps in more than one colonization. The authors regard this as a reasonable null hypothesis, not a proven conclusion.
Phylogenetic analyses and additional fossils could help distinguish among these histories. For now, the study establishes ancient presence, not an unbroken line of descent.
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Does this mean bee origins “don’t make sense”?
No. The unresolved issue is how this fossil relates to the history of New Zealand’s living bees, not whether evolution can explain the evidence. The fossil is placed in Leioproctus broadly; its finer relationships and the history of island populations remain uncertain. It has not been shown to be an ancestor of modern bees, and the paper does not demonstrate a contradiction with evolutionary theory.
Bee-wide origin estimates are a separate question. A 2023 analysis by Almeida and colleagues combined phylogenetic data with 185 identified bee fossils and estimated the origin of crown bees at a mean of 124 million years ago, with a 95% credibility interval of 106.6–137.9 million years. Its model reconstructed an origin in western Gondwana. Those estimates concern bees broadly; they do not date Leioproctus or explain how this fossil’s lineage reached Zealandia. A separate 2013 study argued for a European origin of honey bees in the genus Apis, based on its own evidence. Different lineages and datasets can yield different origin scenarios without resolving this fossil’s ancestry.
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What might the bee have pollinated?
No pollen was found attached to the bee, so its food plants are unknown. Engel and Kaulfuss suggest Pseudopanax as a possible visitor because fossil flowers of that genus are abundant in the same Hindon Maar deposits and the living New Zealand bee Leioproctus pango collects its pollen. That makes Pseudopanax a plausible association, not a demonstrated ancient plant-pollinator relationship.
Quick Recap
Sources
- Engel, M. S. and Kaulfuss, U. (2025), “A bee from the middle Miocene Hindon Maar of southern New Zealand (Hymenoptera, Colletidae),” Zoosystema 47(3): 43–49. https://zoosystema.com/47/3/43
- Almeida et al. (2023), “The evolutionary history of bees in time and space,” Current Biology. https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)00563-0
- 2013 analysis of honey-bee biogeography, Journal of Biogeography. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jbi.12029
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