The genus Xylolaemus contains a total of six extant species distributed from western Europe through the Canary Islands and North Africa to India.

[2] Xylolaemus sakhnovi is known from a single fossil insect which is an inclusion in a transparent chunk of Baltic amber.

The amber specimen contains the beetle imago along with a number of Quercus stellate hairs and a partial aphid.

When the fossil was described it as part of a private collection, with the intent that it would be donated to the Paleontological Institute, Russian Academy of Science.

The specific epithet sakhnovi was coined as a patronym in honor of Nikolay I. Sakhnov, an entomologist and animal painter from the Kaliningrad region.