Archaeolepis mane is amongst the earliest undisputed lepidopteran fossils. It dates from the Lower Jurassic (ca ). It was found in the Charmouth Mudstone Formation, Dorset, United Kingdom.
Archaeolepis mane is amongst the earliest undisputed lepidopteran fossils. It dates from the Lower Jurassic (ca ). It was found in the Charmouth Mudstone Formation, Dorset, United Kingdom.
== Etymology == Archaeolepis means 'ancient scale', referring to the antiquity of the specimen, and the scales (modified and flattened hairs characteristic of butterflies and moths) that identify it as a lepidopteran. The species name, A. mane means 'dawn', further emphasising that it is the earliest known member of this group.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).