Do Honeybees Defy Dinosaur Extinction Theories?

neutron_p writes "The humble tropical honeybee may challenge the idea that a post-asteroid impact "nuclear winter" was a big player in the decimation of dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Somehow the tropical honeybee, Cretotrigona prisca, survived the end-Cretaceous extinction event, despite what many researchers believe was a years-long period of darkness and frigid temperatures caused by sunlight-blocking dust and smoke from the asteroid impact at Chicxulub."

Comments

Re:Anyone else besides me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm, what is 0.00001% of 0?

Decimate

[IGnatius T Foobar]

A bit of pedantry here: the dinosaurs were not decimated, otherwise they'd still be here. To decimate something is to destroy ten percent (hence the "deci-" prefix). In ancient times this was often the punishment handed to an army that conceded a defeat -- ten percent of the men were selected by lot and executed.

Soooooo... please don't use the word "decimate" to imply that something has been completely wiped out.

Re:Confusion...

[C.Batt]

Wish I had some mod points. +1 funny.

Little goth bees suffering severe ennui induced malaise. But lo' they cling desperately to life, even though tis not worth the living anymore.

Buzzzz... buzzz... buzz killer. /I amuse me :-/

Re:Maybe not

[millahtime]

Why do you think it had to be 65 million years ago? And there has been fossils and other things to suggest humans and dinos were around at the same time.

Re:Exactly

[YOU LIKEWISE FAIL IT]

Oog the open source cave bee crush thorax with open source honeycomb.

</obscure>?

Re:Optimal temperature range

[Anonymous Coward]

Bush won the election--we're not going to have to wait long to see a post-impact environment. Let's see how any of us thrive.

Re:Optimal temperature range

[Anonymous Coward]

Play iCLOD Virtual City Explorer and win Half-Life 2

Put spam in your actual sig rather than pasting it in the bottom of your post and avoid pissing off people who turn sig display off to avoid reading spam.

Yes, it is presented as dogma, isn't it?

[leonbrooks]

It's a shame that so much science asks the populace to take it's findings on faith, instead of showing the evidence and how they came to the conclusion. Mabye it's the lack of good scientific journalisim, or mabye journalists don't trust the population to understand, just to accept. Remember there's not even a reference to the estimated sunlight blockage or temperature drop.

Oi! Don't go questioning the Recieved Wisdom of the few Enlightened Ones, or you'll wind up in Career Hell, sinner! (-:

Re:Honey Bee Behavior

[DerWulf]

I can just see how your description is a liberals wet dream for human society.