Formica arcana

Introduction

Formica arcana is an extinct ant species known only from a single fossilized forewing discovered in early Eocene deposits at Quesnel in the Okanagan Highlands of British Columbia, Canada . The species was originally described in 1877 by Samuel Scudder based on wing morphology, making it one of the oldest known Formica fossils from North America. The taxonomic placement of this species has been questioned, with Archibald et al. (2018) suggesting it may not belong to Formica or even the family Formicidae, though more recent analysis by Radchenko et al. (2021) argues the wing venation is consistent with Formica . As a fossil species from approximately 50 million years ago, this ant cannot be kept in captivity and exists today only in the geological record.