JAKARTA – Two 52-million-year-old bat skeletons found at the bottom of an ancient lake in Wyoming, United States are the oldest bat fossils ever found, apart from revealing a new species.
Tim Rietbergen, an evolutionary biologist at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, Netherlands, identified a previously unknown bat species when he began collecting measurements and other data from museum specimens.
“This new research is a step forward in understanding what happened in terms of evolution and diversity in the early days of bats,” he said. CNN 1 Mei.
Today, there are more than 1,400 living species of bats found worldwide, except for the polar regions. However, how these creatures evolved to become the only mammals capable of flying on their own is still not well understood.
The bat fossil record is patchy, and the two fossils that Rietbergen identified as new species were fortunate finds, extremely well preserved and showing the animal’s complete skeleton, including teeth.
“Bat skeletons are small, light and fragile, which is very unfavorable for the fossilization process. They are not well preserved,” he explained.
Recently discovered bat species – Icaronycteris gunnelli – not much different from the bats that fly today. The teeth show that this bat lives by eating insects. It’s incredibly small, weighing only 25 grams (0.88 ounces).
“If it folds its wings beside its body, it will easily fit into your hand. Its wings are relatively short and wide, reflecting a more flapping style of flight,” explains Rietbergen.
This particular bat lived when Earth’s climate was warm and humid. The two skeletons that Rietbergen studied survived for thousands of years. Most likely because the creatures fell into the lake, putting them out of reach of predators and into an environment more conducive to fossilization.
It is known that the ancient lakebed is part of the Wyoming Green River Formation and has yielded a number of bat fossils.
One of the two fossils was collected by a private collector in 2017 and purchased by the American Museum of Natural History. The other fossil belongs to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and was discovered in 1994.
Tags: international research scientific research
2023-05-07 16:01:00
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