In the course of ongoing revision of the ant genus Myrmica Latreille, 1804, we located, in the collections of the Russian and Polish Academies of Sciences, pieces of Baltic Amber (Late Eocene, ca. 40 Ma; earlier this amber was considered to be Oligocene, e.g., see Wheeler, 1915; Larsson, 1978; Bolton, 1995; Dlussky, 1997), that each contained a fossilized specimen of Myrmica. We were also fortunate to be given access to a piece of Saxonian Amber (the same age as Baltic Amber) from the collection of Manfred Kutscher that contained three specimens of Myrmica. Four of the specimens belong to two new species. We describe these below, placing them in context with extant species, and we re-appraise all previously described fossil Myrmica, providing a key to the identification of the five extinct “true” Myrmica species.

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The Tetramorium striativentre species group is revised. Workers and queens of the species of this group are characterized by the unique for all other Palaearctic Tetramorium species feature: the first gastral tergite, or at least its anterior half, is very densely and distinctly longitudinally striato-punctated. We place six species to this group, including two new ones: T. striativentre Mayr, T. schneideri Emery, T. kabulistanicum Pisarski, T. saudicum Sharaf, T. sabatinellii sp. n. from Jordan, and T. pisarskii sp. n. from Afghanistan. Additions to the diagnosis of T. striativentre and T. schneideri and the first descriptions of males of these two species are provided, and a key to species of this group is compiled.