Casaleia inversa
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Casaleia Temporal range: Lutetian-Serravallian |
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| C. eocenica holotype | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Clade: | Euarthropoda |
| Class: | Insecta |
| Order: | Hymenoptera |
| Family: | Formicidae |
| Subfamily: | Amblyoponinae |
| Genus: |
†Casaleia Pagliano & Scaramozzino, 1990 |
| Type species | |
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Protamblyopone inversa Dlussky, 1981 |
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| Species | |
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Casaleia is an extinct genus of ants in the formicid subfamily Amblyoponinae described by Pagliano & Scaramozzino in 1990 from fossils found in Europe. The genus contains four species dating from the Eocene to Miocene, Casaleia eocenica, Casaleia inversa, Casaleia longiventris, Casaleia orientalis.
The species placed in Casaleia have a varied history, with the type species Casaleia inversa originally described by Gennady Dlussky in 1981 as "Protamblyopone" inversa. The fossil was recovered from Middle Miocene age sediments exposed in the Chon-Tyz mine, Naryn Region, Kyrgyzstan. However "Protamblyopone" was already used by William Morton Wheeler as a subgenus of Amblyopone. To correct the homonym status, the species was moved to the new genus Casaleia by Pagliano and Scaramozzino in a 1990 paper.
The second species in the genus, C. eocenica, is of Lutetian age, and was recovered as a solitary compression-impression fossil preserved in a layer of soft sedimentary rock. Along with other well preserved insect fossils, the C. eocenica specimen was collected from layers of the Lutetian Messel pit World Heritage Site. The formation is composed of brown coals, oil shales, and bituminous shale, which preserved numerous insects, fish, birds, reptiles, and terrestrial mammals as a notable lagerstätten. The area is a preserved maar lake which initially formed approximately 47 million years ago as the result of volcanic explosions. The fossil was described by Dlussky and Sonja Wedmann in a 2012 paper on the poneromorph ants of Messel. The specific epithet "eocenica" is derived from the Eocene age of the fossil. At the time of description, the fossil was preserved in the collections of the Forschungsstation Grube Messel as number FIS MeI 5565.
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