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Two bats of bats aged $ 52 million discovered in an old lake bed in Wyoming are the oldest bats in bats ever-and they reveal a new species.
Tim Rietbergen, an evolving biologist at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, in the Netherlands, identified the species of batteries previously unknown when he began to collect measures and other data from museum specimens.
“This new research is a step forward in understanding what happened in terms of evolution and diversity at the start of the bat,” he said.
Today, there are more than 1,400 species of living bats worldwide, with the exception of polar regions. But the way creatures have evolved to be the only mammal capable of food flight is not well understood.
The fossil file of bats is uneven, and the two fossils that Rietbergen identified as a new species has been lucky – exceptionally well preserved and revealing the complete animal skeletons, including teeth.
“The bat skeletons are small, light and fragile, which is very unfavorable for the fossilization process. They simply do not preserve well,” he said.
The species of newly discovered batties extinguished – IcaronyCteris Gunnelli – was not very different from bats that fly today. Her teeth revealed that she was living on an insect diet. It was tiny, weighing only 25 grams (0.88 ounces).
“If he folds his wings next to his body, he would easily integrate into your hand. His wings were relatively short and wide, reflecting a more floating flight style,” said Rietbergen.
This particular bat lived when the earth’s climate was hot and humid. The two skeletons that Rietbergen studied have survived the eons probably because the creatures fell into a lake, putting them out of the reach of predators and in an environment more conducive to fossilization. The old lake bed is part of the formation of the Wyoming green river and has given a number of bat fossils.
One of the two fossils was collected by a private collector in 2017 and bought by the American Museum of Natural History. The other belonged to the Royal Museum of Ontario in Toronto and was found in 1994.
Research was published Wednesday in the scientific journal PLOS One.
