The origin of bats has been shrouded in mystery until now. A new finding revealed a skeleton that can be traced to the oldest bat species.
Scientists have confirmed the discovery of a new bat species at the Green River Formation in Wyoming, in a study published Wednesday. The bat species lived about 52 million years ago during the Eocene epoch and is referred to aswere first discovered in 1994 and a nearly complete single specimen was recovered in August 2017. It is theTim Rietbergen, the first study author and a paleontologist at Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands, told, “The ancestor of bats is still unknown.
The Green River Formation is an Eocene fossil hotspot. Rietbergen claims that he alone knows of the existence of about 30 specimens. Complete skeletons of previously discovered oldest bats belonging to the genera Icaronycteris and Onychonycteris were also found at the Green River Formation., it was a humid and warm environment, and the whole area was covered by a giant lake, also known as 'Fossil Lake'.
However, these physical trails made it look very different from other Eocene bats. “This new research is a step forward in understanding what happened in terms of evolution and diversity back in the early days of bats. It supports the idea that bats from this location evolved separately from other Eocene bats around the world,” said Rietbergen.today, the researchers argue that there’s still a lot that we don’t know about the early evolution of bats because of the lack of fossils.
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