Coleopsis

Coleopsis is an extinct genus of stem-group beetles. It contains a single species, Coleopsis archaica, and is the only member of the family Coleopsidae and superfamily Coleopsoidea. It is known from a single specimen from the Early Permian of southwestern Germany, estimated to be about 297 million years old. It is currently the oldest known beetle.

==History of research== The single specimen used to describe Coleopsis archaica (the holotype), ZfB 3315, comes from a small outcrop (exposed bedrock) south of the village of Grügelborn, approximately north-northeast from the town of Sankt Wendel, in northeastern Saarland, Germany. The rocks belong to the Humberg Bed, located in the uppermost part of the Meisenheim Formation, which is part of the Rotliegend lithostratigraphic unit of the Saar-Nahe Basin. Slightly older sediments from the same formation were dated to 297.0 ± 3.2 Ma, suggesting that the Coleopsis archaica fossil dates to the latest Asselian age or the earliest Sakmarian age of the Early Permian.