Casaleia
genus of insects (fossil)
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.
History and classification
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.
“Casaleia” enters the record as genus of insects (fossil). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Casaleia, genus and insects can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Casaleia” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Casaleia, genus and insects provides the most credible route into that argument.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18102367. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1990 and 1981.
A general summary may omit uncertainty, sample limits or methodological disagreement that is explicit in the technical record. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Casaleia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.