Camponotites flarex

Introduction

Camponotites flarex is an extinct ant species known only from a fossil imprint discovered in the Shanwang Basin of Shandong, China, dating to the Miocene epoch approximately 16-11 million years ago . The species was originally described in 1994 as Camponotus pictus, but this name was already in use for a living ant species (Camponotus ligniperdus var. pictus, described by Forel in 1886), so it was renamed Camponotites flarex in 2025 to resolve the naming conflict . Only the queen caste has been documented from the fossil record . As a fossil species, no living specimens exist, and no biological or ecological information is available.