Camelomecia
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Camelomecia Temporal range: Earliest Cenomanian |
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| Camelomecia janovitzi holotype AMNH-BUTJ003 | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Clade: | Euarthropoda |
| Class: | Insecta |
| Order: | Hymenoptera |
| Family: | Formicidae |
| Genus: | †Camelomecia |
| Species: | †C. janovitzi |
| Binomial name | |
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Camelomecia janovitzi Barden & Grimaldi, 2016 |
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Camelomecia is an extinct genus of stem-group ants not placed into any Formicidae subfamily. Fossils of the single known species, Camelomecia janovitzi, are known from the Middle Cretaceous of Asia. The genus is one of several ants described from Middle Cretaceous ambers of Myanmar.
Camelomecia is known from three total adult fossils, the holotype, specimen number "AMNH Bu-TJ003", and two additional fragmentary adults not designated as paratypes. At the time of the genus description, the three specimens were residing in the American Museum of Natural History, in New York City. The described specimens are of queen and drone caste adults which have been preserved as inclusions in transparent chunks of Burmese amber. The amber specimens were recovered from deposits in Kachin State, in Myanmar. Burmese amber has been radiometrically dated using U-Pb isotopes, yielding an age of approximately 98.79 ± 0.62 million years old, close to the Aptian – Cenomanian boundary, in the earliest Cenomanian.
The fossils were first studied by paleoentomologists Philip Barden and David Grimaldi, both of the American Museum of Natural History. Barden and Grimaldi's 2016 type description of the new genus and species was published in the journal Current Biology. The genus name Camelomecia was coined as a combination of the suffix "mecia" which is commonly used in ant genus names, and camel, in reference to the head when viewed from the side. The specific epithet janovitzi is a patronym honoring Tyler Janovitz who donated the type specimen for study.Camelomecia is one of several ant genera described from Burmese amber the others being Burmomyrma, Ceratomyrmex, Gerontoformica, Haidomyrmex, Myanmyrma, and Zigrasimecia.
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