Leptomyrmex neotropicus
Leptomyrmex neotropicus is an extinct species of Miocene ant in the genus Leptomyrmex. Described by Baroni Urbani in 1980, a total of 10 workers of this species were found in a single block of Dominican amber.

via iDigBio · via iDigBio. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- LeptomyrmexPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At most 6.7 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 20.45 Mya and 13.82 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
4 occurrences of Leptomyrmex neotropicus on record, most of them in the Miocene. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
4 occurrences- Miocene100%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Leptomyrmex neotropicus and its relatives
MioceneWhere Leptomyrmex neotropicus and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
432 taxa- Antillopsyche auricula2 sites
- Apocephalus succineus2 sites
- Cephalotes integerrimus2 sites
- Cephalotes obscurus2 sites
- Cephalotes squamosus2 sites
- Harpactosphecion sucinum2 sites
- Neomachilellus (Praeneomachilellus) dominicanus2 sites
- Ogcodes exotica2 sites
- Proceratium dominicanum2 sites
- Solenopsis2 sites
- Solenopsis pilonaria2 sites
- Technomyrmex hispaniolae2 sites
- Zatania electra2 sites
- Ablabesmyia electrohispaniolana1 site
- Acamptus exilipes1 site
- Acanthostichus hispaniolicus1 site
- Acropyga1 site
- Acropyga glaesaria1 site
- Agelaia electra1 site
- Alienates1 site
- Alienates brodzinskyi1 site
- Alienates electrodominicus1 site
- Alumeda antilliana1 site
- Alumeda dominicana1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Leptomyrmex neotropicus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
4 references- The first fossil replete ant worker establishes living food storage in the Eocene1
- Where fossils dare and males matter: combined morphological and molecular analysis untangles the evolutionary history of the spider ant genus Leptomyrmex Mayr (Hymenoptera : Dolichoderinae)1
- Ants of the Dominican Amber (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) 3. The Subfamily Dolichoderinae1
- The first fossil species of the Australian ant genus Leptomyrmex in amber from the Dominican Republic (Amber collection Stuttgart: Hymenoptera, Formicidae. III: Leptomyrmicini)1
Each of the 4 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1

Picture of Leptomyrmex neotropicus
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Leptomyrmex neotropicus was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itLeptomyrmex through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Baroni Urbani 1980)