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Titanomyrma
| †Titanomyrma Temporal range: 49.5–47 Ma Ypresian, Early Eocene to Lutetian, Middle Eocene | |
|---|---|
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| Titanomyrma lubei | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Class: | Insecta |
| Order: | Hymenoptera |
| Family: | Formicidae |
| Subfamily: | Formiciinae |
| Genus: | †Titanomyrma Archibald, Johnson, Mathewes & Greenwood, 2011 |
| Type species | |
| Titanomyrma gigantea | |
| Diversity | |
| 3 fossil species (Species Checklist) | |
Titanomyrma is a fossil genus of giant ant. The latest species to be discovered, Titanomyrma lubei, was described in 2011, when a 49.5 million year old fossilized winged queen ant was found in Wyoming. This fossil is the first body of a giant ant found in the Western Hemisphere. The presence of Titanomyrma in North America is considered to indicate "the first reported cross-Arctic dispersal by a thermophilic insect group". Another fossil species of this genus, Titanomyrma gigantea, is the largest known fossil or extant species of giant ant in the world.
Identification
Distribution
This taxon is known from Messel, Germany (Lutetian, Middle Eocene) and Green River Formation, Sweetwater County, Wyoming, United States (Ypresian, Early Eocene).
Castes
Nomenclature
The following information is derived from Barry Bolton's Online Catalogue of the Ants of the World.
- †TITANOMYRMA [†Formiciinae]
- †Titanomyrma Archibald, et al. 2011: 3680. Type-species: †Titanomyrma lubei, by original designation.
References
- Archibald, S.B., Johnson, K.R., Mathewes, R.W., Greenwood, D.R. 2011. Intercontinental dispersal of giant thermophilic ants across the Arctic during early Eocene hyperthermals. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 278(1725): 3679–3686 (doi:10.1098/rspb.2011.0729).
- Barden, P. 2017. Fossil ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae): ancient diversity and the rise of modern lineages. Myrmecological News 24: 1-30.
- Cantone, S., Von Zuben, C.J. 2019. The hindwings of ants: A phylogenetic analysis. Psyche: A Journal of Entomology 2019, 1–11 (doi:10.1155/2019/7929717).
- Katzke, J., Barden, P., Dehon, M., Michez, D., Wappler, T. 2018. Giant ants and their shape: revealing relationships in the genus Titanomyrma with geometric morphometrics. PeerJ 6:e4242 (DOI 10.7717/peerj.4242).