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The Prehistoric Bat Thread
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02-11-2009 5:26pm#1Nyctalus lasiopterus, Europe's biggest living bat, has been proven to be a long lived species. It's fossils are over ten thousand years old, dating from the Late Plestocene. What's more, it used to have a much wider geographical range than it's modern counterparts, suggesting that the species is not doing too well.It is an important finding because this species is not common in the fossil record. In fact, the discovery of Nyctalus lasiopterus at the Abríc Romaní site (Capellades, Barcelona) is one of the few cases of fossils existing on the species in the European Pleistocene," says Juan Manuel López-García, principal author of the work and researcher at the Institute of Social Evolution and Human Palaeoecology at the Rovira i Virgili University (URV).
Full article here.
Photo Credit: A.G. Popa-Lisseanu et al. / SINCTagged:- europe
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- barcelona
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- biggest
- catalan
- caribbean
- greater
- amber
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- pleistocene
- largest
- nyctalus
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- holocene
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- michael crichton
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- dominican
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Comments
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Bat flies evolved along with bats, and live as their parasites; their bodies are flattened like those of a flea to crawl in the bat's fur. These insects only leave their hosts to mate, and this is what this particular one was probably doing when it became stuck in tree sap in what would one day become the Dominican Republic (wonder if InGen ever got their hands on one of these?)
This discovery suggests that bat flies have been around for at least 20 million years; it is the very first bat fly fossil ever found.
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National Geographic's take on it:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/02/120210-vampire-bat-fly-amber-malaria-parasites-animals-science/Before he became a specialist in ancient diseases inside equally ancient bugs, Poinar had worked on attempting to extract DNA from insects trapped in amber—work which author Michael Crichton has acknowledged as part of his inspiration for Jurassic Park.
But no ancient bats will be reconstructed from this specimen, even if it were possible.
"As far as I'm concerned," Poinar said, "this specimen is so rare that we wouldn't want to attempt to try it."
aww
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National Geographic's take on it:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/02/120210-vampire-bat-fly-amber-malaria-parasites-animals-science/
aww 0 -
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Not truly a giant as claimed; just bigger than its modern equivalents. I have yet to see anything about a truly big prehistoric bat (anything comparable to today's flying foxes)
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/100478460/giant-extinct-burrowing-bat-discovered-in-south-island
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Not truly a giant as claimed; just bigger than its modern equivalents. I have yet to see anything about a truly big prehistoric bat (anything comparable to today's flying foxes)
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/100478460/giant-extinct-burrowing-bat-discovered-in-south-island
I feel a right idiot as I misread the title totally. it made no sense so I checked it out after all not every day you come across the the fossilised remains of a burrowing HAT
:D:D:D 0 -
Oldest vampire bat fossil found in Uruguay
Article is in Spanish. The fossil is a five centimeter arm bone- thus larger than the equivalent in today's common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus), and comparable in size to the giant vampire bat Desmodus draculae, which had a wingspan of around one meter.
https://ciencia.ladiaria.com.uy/articulo/2019/4/paleontologos-publican-trabajo-sobre-el-fosil-de-vampiro-mas-antiguo-de-sudamerica-y-tal-vez-del-mundo-encontrado-en-las-barrancas-de-kiyu-en-san-jose/
Today, there are three species of vampire bat, only one of which (Desmodus rotundus) feeds on mammal blood; the other two feed on bird blood. The paleontologists speculate that if the prehistoric vampire was like D. rotundus, it may have fed on the large mammals of the time such as ground sloths and rodents, but if it was a bird specialist it may have fed on the blood of terror birds, among others. Alternatively, it may have been less of a specialist than its modern kin, feeding on both mammal and bird blood.
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