NOMEN: Palaeolepidoptera Packard 1895 [A.S. Packard. On the phylogeny of the Lepidoptera. – Zoologischer Anzeiger, 1895, 18 (465): 228-236]
ORIGINAL LISTED MEMBERSHIP (Packard 1895):
Eriocrania/fg (= Micropterygidae sensu
Chapman 1894) 
JUNIOR CIRCUMSCRIPTIONAL SYNONYMS:
= Hoplostomatoptera Kiriakoff 1948
= Paleolepidoptera Mielke & Casagrande 2006
TYPIFIED NAME IN BASIC FORMAT: Eriocrania/fg
TYPIFIED NAMES IN USE: Eriocrania, Eriocraniides, Eriocraniidae, Eriocraniina
MODERN
STATUS: 
the valid, the
oldest name, belonging either to widely accepted plesiomorphon (Palaeolepidopterta
s.l.), or to a holophyletic taxon (Palaeolepidoptera s.str.).
Systematic position and classification of Palaeolepidoptera:
| classification by Packard 1895 | classification by Nielsen & Kristensen 1996 |
| Lepidoptera plesiomorphon Protolepidoptera Glossolepidoptera plesiomorphon Palaeolepidoptera Neolepidoptera |
Lepidoptera plesiomorphon Protolepidoptera Glossolepidoptera Palaeolepidoptera (s.str.) Coelolepida Acanthopteroctetes/fg Lophocorona/fg Myoglossata Neopseustis/fg Neolepidoptera (s.str.) |
COMMENT. When the taxon Palaeolepidoptera was established, Acanthopteroctetes, Lophocorona and the taxa attributed to Neopseustis/fg1 were not discovered yet. So the name Palaeolepidoptera (and its circumscriptional synonym Hoplostomatoptera) can be used either in a wide sense – for a plesiomorphon which is characterized only by retention of pupa dectica, or in a narrow sense – for a smaller taxon, which is probably holophyletic and is characterized by some autapomorphies (Nielsen & Kristensen 1996 [The Australian moth family Lophocoronidae and the basal phylogeny of the Lepidoptera-Glossata. – Invertebrate Taxonomy, 10 (6): 1199-1302]).