[[Genus Archaeoteleia ^HNS Masner]]

The fossil record of the family Scelionidae ^HNS (Hymenoptera: Platygastroidea) dates back to the mid Cretaceous (Nel & Azar 2005; Johnson et al. in press). Very few of the genera, however, have disjunct distributions characteristically associated with continental drift. The genus Archaeoteleia ^HNS Masner is one prominent exception, exhibiting a transantarctic distribution, being found only in New Zealand and the Valdivian forests of Chile.

In the years since Archaeoteleia ^HNS was originally described by Masner (1968), numerous specimens have been collected, and the species richness of the genus is significantly greater than indicated in the published literature.