Bombycites oeningensis is an extinct lepidopteran from the Messinian (7-5 million years ago) of Öhningen, Switzerland."Perhaps the richest Miocene insect deposits in Europe are from Oeningen in Switzerland and Radoboj in Croatia. Fossils from these localities were extensively monographed by Oswald Heer." (David Grimaldi, Michael S. Engel, 2005, Evolution of the Insects p.89). It is described in 1849 from a fossil pupa by the Swiss geologist and naturalist Oswald Heer.Heer, in series Neue Denkschriften der Allgemeinen Schweizerischen Gesellschaft für die gesammten Naturwissenschaft, 1849. Because neither the adult nor larval forms are known, either of which contain crucial diagnostic features, its familial and superfamilial placement is uncertain.

See also Prehistoric Lepidoptera

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