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June 2022
45-1
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Print ISSN: 0031-0247
Online ISSN: 2274-0333
Frequency: biannual

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An evening bat (Chiroptera: Vespertilionidae) from the late Early Eocene of France, with comments on the antiquity of modern bats
Suzanne J. Hand, Bernard Sigé, Michael Archer and Karen H. Black
Keywords: evolution; palaeobiogeography; Prémontré; Western Europe; Ypresian

doi: 10.18563/pv.40.2.e2
 
  Abstract

    Bats are among the most numerous and widespread mammals today, but their fossil record is comparatively meagre and their early evolution poorly understood. Here we describe a new fossil bat from dental remains recovered from late Early Eocene sediments at Prémontré, northern France. This 50 million-year-old bat exhibits a mosaic of plesiomorphic and apomorphic dental features, including the presence of three lower premolars, a single-rooted p3, short p4 with metaconid, myotodont lower molars and a tall coronoid process of the dentary. This combination of features suggests it is an early member of Vespertilionidae, today’s most speciose and geographically widespread bat family. The Prémontré bat has bearing on hypotheses about the origins of vesper or evening bats (Family Vespertilionidae), as well as crown-group chiropterans.


      


  Article infos

Published in Vol.40-2 (2016)

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An Australian Miocene Brachipposideros (Mammalia, Chiroptera) related to Miocene representatives from France
Bernard Sigé, Suzanne J. Hand and Michael Archer
Keywords: Australia; bats; Chiroptera; Miocene
 
  Abstract

    A new middle Miocene hipposiderid bat is described from a limestone deposit on Riversleigh Station in north-western Queensland. Hipposideros (Brachipposideros) nooraleebus n. sp. is the first record of this subgenus from anywhere in the world outside of France. The palaeoecological setting of the fossil bats appears to have been a relatively quiet, sunny lime-enriched tropical pool that contained tortoises, crocodiles and fish. It is possible that the bats were washed into the pool from an adjacent cave.
    The Riversleigh bat most closely resembles the French Burdigalian (early middle Miocene) bat H. (B.) aguilari. It is also possible that it may have been closely related to the original Australian hipposiderid stock that ultimately gave rise to the endemic monotÿpic Rhinonycteris aurantius. The disjunct distribution of species of H. (Brachipposideros) suggests that representatives of this subgenus will be found in at least tropical southern Asia. 


  Article infos

Published in Vol. 12, Fasc. 5 (1982)

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